Question

Take for example a short file consisting of these lines:

Apple = 1
Pear = 1
Orange = 2
;
Orange = 3
Pear = 1
;
Apple = 1
Pear = 1
Orange = 1

What I did was to readline the text file, and put Apple, Orange and Pear into their respective lists such as:

Orange = [ 2,3,1 ]
Pear = [ 1,1,1 ]

I used line.count('Apple')==1 to identify that the current line in the text file is a fruit and then append the value after = to the list.

As you can see, the second section is missing Apple. I want the list to be:

Apple = [ 1,'-',1]

Whenever the line does not show a fruit, the list should append - to indicate it.

My question is, how then can I do it ie. to determine that a section is missing a fruit name and then to append - to it.

Answer 1

You could keep an array with all the fruit names found in a section. When you encounter a semicolon you check for each fruit if its name exists in the array and append a ‘-‘ if it does not, then you clear the array and continue with the next section.