Problem loading a file of words

[Peter Otten]

teoryn wrote:

> I've been spending today learning python and as an exercise I've ported
> a program I wrote in java that unscrambles a word. Before describing
> the problem, here's the code:

>         line = str.lower(line[:-1]) # convert to lowercase just in case

> have to add exceptions later). The problem is when using a large
> dictionary.txt file (2.9 MB is the size of the dictionary I tested) it
> always gives an error, specifically:
> (Note: ccehimnostyz is for zymotechnics, which is in the large
> dictionary)
> 
> 
> *--beginning of example--*
> Enter a scrambled word : ccehimnostyz
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "unscram.py", line 62, in ?
>     results = dictionary[sort_string(lookup)]
> KeyError: 'ccehimnostyz'
> *--end of example--*

If 'zymotechnics' is the last line and that line is missing a trailing
newline 

line[:-1] 

mutilates 'zymotechnics' to 'zymotechnic'. In that case the dictionary would
contain the key 'ccehimnotyz'. Another potential problem could be
leading/trailing whitespace. Both problems can be fixed by using
line.strip() instead of line[:-1] as in Robert Kern's code.

Peter