How can I export data from a website and write the contents to a text file?

[ryguy7272]

On Wednesday, November 18, 2015 at 12:21:47 PM UTC-5, Denis McMahon wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 08:37:47 -0800, ryguy7272 wrote:
> 
> > I'm trying the script below...
> 
> The problem isn't that you're over-writing the lines (although it may 
> seem that way to you), the problem is that you're overwriting the whole 
> file every time you write a link to it. This is because you open and 
> close the file for every link you write, and you do so in file mode "wb" 
> which restarts writing at the first byte of the file every time.
> 
> You only need to open and close the text file once, instead of for every 
> link you output. Try moving the lines to open and close the file outside 
> the outer for loop to change the loop from:
> 
> for item in soup.find_all(class_='lister-list'):
>     for link in item.find_all('a'):
>         # open file
>         # write link to file
>         # close file
> 
> to:
> 
> # open file
> for item in soup.find_all(class_='lister-list'):
>     for link in item.find_all('a'):
>         # write link to file
> # close file
> 
> Alternatively, use the with form:
> 
> with open("blah","wb") as text_file:
>     for item in soup.find_all(class_='lister-list'):
>         for link in item.find_all('a'):
>             # write link to file
> 
> -- 
> Denis McMahon, 


Yes, I just figured it out.  Thanks.  

It doesn't seem like the '\n' is doing anything useful.  All the text is jumbled together.  When I open the file in Excel, or Notepad++, it is easy to read.  However, when I open it in as a regular text file, everything is jumbled together.  Is there an easy way to fix this?