[Tutor] Extract element of dtype object

[Mats Wichmann]

On 12/6/20 6:37 AM, Stephen P. Molnar wrote:
> I have a large number of files from which I wish to extract a number.

Your succession of examples is not leaving me, at least, with any 
clarity of what you're actually looking for.  You need to define for 
yourself a description in words, then you can probably begin to code it 
up. Youi include "and the code snippet" but there is no code snippet...

see below

> 
> This is an example or a portion of the file:
> 
> mode |   affinity | dist from best mode
>       | (kcal/mol) | rmsd l.b.| rmsd u.b.
> -----+------------+----------+----------
>     1    -8.538750714      0.000      0.000
>     2    -8.487003690      3.712      7.079
>     3    -8.420436250      3.018      6.604
>     4    -7.992952187      3.711      7.282
>     5    -7.933139639      2.128      6.739
>     6    -7.889517329      2.667      6.537
>     7    -7.720785374     20.143     23.808
>     8    -7.629772565     21.218     25.083
>     9    -7.560349273      2.136      7.865
> Writing output ... done.
> 
> and the code snippet:
> 
> Refining results ... done.
> 
> 0 mode | affinity | dist from best mode
> 
> 1 | (kcal/mol) | rmsd l.b.| rmsd u.b.
> 
> 2 -----+------------+----------+----------
> 
> 3 1 -8.538750714 0.000 0.000
> 
> 4 2 -8.487003690 3.712 7.079
> 
> the output:
> 
> Refining results ... done. 1 -8.538750714 0.000 0.000
> 
> 
>                     Refining results ... done.
> 0     mode |   affinity | dist from best mode
> 1         | (kcal/mol) | rmsd l.b.| rmsd u.b.
> 2    -----+------------+----------+----------
> 3     1           0.000      0.000
> 4     2    -8.487003690      3.712      7.079
> Refining results ... done.       1    -8.538750714      0.000 0.000
> Name: 3, dtype: object
> 
> The number that I want to extract is -8.538750714.

If you're collecting lines from running an external script, you can run 
that script with subprocess.run and then look through the resulting 
output until you find a line that matches some recognizable pattern. 
That pattern seems to be "Refining results ... done." but it appears so 
many times in the above it's hard to sort out what's what. If that's the 
case you can then trim that line either with plain string handling 
routines or with a regular expression (regexes get a bad reputation, 
they're good for handling text with recognizable patterns, but may be 
overkill for this case)

Will wait for some clarification before digging further...