Question

Working on a function that takes lines of texts and turns them into an inner list based
on a space between the blocks. The code works for all but the very last chunk, which it ignores or something.

Code:

def build_grocery_list(grocery_file):
    food_list = []
    inner_list = []
    for line in grocery_file:
        if line.strip() == "":
            food_list.append(inner_list)
            inner_list = []            
        if line.strip() != "":
            inner_list.append(line.strip())

    return food_list

returns: [['milk', 'cheese', 'cream cheese', 'eggs'], ['bread', 'buns', 'pita'], ['hamburgers', 'hotdogs', 'chicken'], ['chicken soup', 'canned tuna']]

missing the last block :lettuce, cabbage

Answer 1

If you have an empty line at the end of the text file it will work. If not it never appends the last inner_list. Just add a check and append after you exit the loop.

def build_grocery_list(grocery_file):
    food_list = []
    inner_list = []
    for line in grocery_file:
        if line.strip() == "":
            food_list.append(inner_list)
            inner_list = []            
        if line.strip() != "":
            inner_list.append(line.strip())
    if (inner_list):
        food_list.append(inner_list)

    return food_list