read in a list in a file to list

[boB Stepp]

On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 3:21 PM,  <breamoreboy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, April 8, 2017 at 7:32:52 PM UTC+1, john polo wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am using Python 3.6 on Windows 7.
>>
>> I have a file called apefile.txt. apefile.txt's contents are:
>>
>> apes =  "Home sapiens", "Pan troglodytes", "Gorilla gorilla"
>>
>> I have a script:
>>
>> apefile =  open("apefile.txt")
>> apelist =  apefile.read()

I think you misunderstand what the read() method is doing here.  It
does not return a list.  Instead, it returns the entire file as a
single string.

>> for ape in apelist:

So here despite the variable name you chose, you are acutally
iterating over the entire file contents character by character.  See
Mark's answer/hint below on how to iterate over the file contents by
line.  You might want to look up the docs on how to use these file
objects and their methods.

>>     print("one of the apes is " + ape)
>> apefile.close()
>>
>> The output from the script does not print the ape names, instead it
>> prints each letter in the file. For example:
>>
>> one of the apes is a
>> one of the apes is p
>> one of the apes is e
>>
>> What should I do instead to get something like
>>
>> one of the apes is Home sapiens
>> one of the apes is Pan troglodytes
>> one of the apes is Gorilla gorilla
>>
>> John
>
> I'll start you off.
>
> with open("apefile.txt") as apefile:
>     for line in apefile:
>         doSomething(line)
>
> String methods and/or the csv module might be used here in doSomething(line), but I'll leave that to you so that you can learn.  If you get stuck please ask again, we don't bite :)


-- 
boB