Question

What I would like the final code to execute is read a string of names in a text document named, ‘names.txt’. Then tell the program to calculate how many names there are in that file and display the amount of names. The code I have so far was meant to display the sum of the numbers in a text file, but it was close enough to the program I need now that I think I may be able to rework it to gather the amount of strings/names and display that instead of the sum.

Here is the code so far:

def main():
    #initialize an accumulator.
    total = 0.0

    try:
        # Open the file.
        myfile = open('names.txt', 'r')

        # Read and display the file's contents.
        for line in myfile:
            amount = float(line)
            total += amount

        # Close the file.
        myfile.close()

    except IOError:
        print('An error occured trying to read the file.')

    except ValueError:
        print('Non-numeric data found in the file.')

    except:
        print('An error occured.')

# Call the main function.
main()

I am still really new to Python programming so please don’t be too harsh on me. If anyone can figure out how to rework this to display the amount of numbers/names instead of the sum of numbers. I would greatly appreciate it. If this program cannot be reworked, I would be happy to settle for a new solution.

Edit: This it an example of what the ‘names.txt’ will look like:

john

mary

paul

ann

Answer 1

If you just want to count the lines in the file

# Open the file.
myfile = open('names.txt', 'r')

#Count the lines in the file
totalLines = len(myfile.readlines()):

# Close the file.
myfile.close()