Output file formatting/loop problems -- HELP?

[Maggie]

On Sep 8, 12:35 pm, MRAB <pyt... at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:
> Maggie wrote:
> > On Sep 8, 11:39 am, MRAB <pyt... at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:
> >> Maggie wrote:
> >>> My code is supposed to enumerate each line of file (1, 2, 3...) and
> >>> write the new version into the output file --
> >>> #!/usr/bin/python
> >>> import os.path
> >>> import csv
> >>> import sys
> >>> #name of output file
> >>> filename = "OUTPUT.txt"
> >>> #open the file
> >>> test = open ("test.txt", "r")
> >>> #read in all the data into a list
> >>> readData = test.readlines()
> >>> count = 0
> >>> FILE = open(filename, "w")
> >>> for item in readData:
> >> Try adding:
> >>       print repr(item)
>
> >> here to see what the lines actually look like. It might be a problem
> >> with line endings.
>
> >>>    count = count + 1
> >>>    tmp_string = str(count) + '     ' + item
> >>>    print >> FILE, tmp_string
> >>> else:
> >>>    print 'The loop is finito'
> >>> ---
> >>> here is the sample file --
> >>> 23
> >>> 123
> >>> 231
> >>> 1231
> >>> ---
> >>> the output file i get looks like this:
> >>> 1  23
> >>> 123
> >>> 231
> >>> 1231
> >>> --
> >>> my question is why the enumeration starts and stops at first line and
> >>> doesnt go through the entire file --
> >>> (file is saved as .txt, so hypothetically no .rtf formatting that
> >>> would screw up the output should be present)
> >>> thanks for your help
>
> > great tip, thanks so much -- now this is the output i get in the
> > terminal...
>
> > '23\r123\r231\r1231'
>
> > why is it so? since the file is in .txt format - there should be no
> > formatting involved?... how would i fix this?
>
> It shows that the line endings are carriage returns '\r'.
>
> Line endings on Windows are '\r\n', on Unix/Linux are '\n' and on MacOS
> are '\r', although recent versions of MacOS built on top of Unix.
>
> The easiest solution would be to open the file in universal line-ending
> mode:
>
>      test = open ("test.txt", "rU")
>
> This will translate any of the line endings.

works beautifully now! thank you all for your input!!!