[Tutor] readlines code

[Rick Pasotto]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2003 at 09:43:37PM -0400, Cliff Martin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to read in an ASCII file of a fairly large set of data with 
> data separated by spaces and each line ending with a linefeed.  If I use 
> readlines() I get all the data but each line still has a \n tacked on. 
> If I use:
> 
> f=open("c:/transfer/filename")
> for line in f.readlines():
>        words=line.rstrip().split()
> 
> I get only the last line of the file in words.  Could someone explain 
> why this is happening?  There is something about the use of Python here 
> that I'm not understanding.  Thanks for any help.

I suspect you're only *doing* something to the last line.

Consider the following two programs:

f = open("c:/transfer/filename")
for line in f.readlines():
	words=line.rstrip().split()
print words

f = open("c:/transfer/filename")
for line in f.readlines():
	words=line.rstrip().split()
	print words

Both process all the lines in the file but the first only prints out the
last line while the second prints out all the lines.

Indentation is *critical* in python.

-- 
"Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."
		-- Walt Whitman
    Rick Pasotto    rick@niof.net    http://www.niof.net