Extract lines from file, add to new files

[Thomas Passin]

On 1/30/2024 12:21 PM, Rich Shepard via Python-list wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jan 2024, Thomas Passin via Python-list wrote:
> 
>> Fine, my toy example will still be applicable. But, you know, you haven't
>> told us enough to give you help. Do you want to replace text from values
>> in a file? That's been covered. Do you want to send the messages using
>> those libraries? You haven't said what you don't know how to do. 
>> Something
>> else? What is it that you want to do that you don't know how?
> 
> Thomas,
> 
> For 30 years I've used a bash script using mailx to send messages to a list
> of recipients. They have no salutation to personalize each one. Since I 
> want
> to add that personalized salutation I decided to write a python script to
> replace the bash script.
> 
> I have collected 11 docs explaining the smtplib and email modules and
> providing example scripts to apply them to send multiple individual 
> messages
> with salutations and attachments.

If I had a script that's been working for 30 years, I'd probably just 
use Python to do the personalizing and let the rest of the bash script 
do the rest, like it always has.  The Python program would pipe or send 
the personalized messages to the rest of the bash program. Something in 
that ballpark, anyway.

> Today I'm going to be reading these. They each recommend using .csv input
> files for names and addresses. My first search is learning whether I can
> write a single .csv file such as:
> "name1","address1"
> "mane2","address2"
> which I believe will work; and by inserting at the top of the message block
> Hi, {yourname}
> the name in the .csv file will replace the bracketed place holder
If the file contents are going to be people's names and email addresses, 
I would just tab separate them and split each line on the tab.  Names 
aren't going to include tabs so that would be safe.  Email addresses 
might theoretically include a tab inside a quoted name but that would be 
extremely obscure and unlikely.  No need for CSV, it would just add 
complexity.

data = f.readlines()
for d in data:
     name, addr = line.split('\t') if line.strip() else ('', '')

> Still much to learn and the batch of downloaded PDF files should educate 
> me.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rich