[Tutor] Python Help: Converting a text file into a specified format

[Sibylle Koczian]

Am 29.03.2020 um 12:56 schrieb Alan Gauld via Tutor:
> Incidentally the file you attached seems to contain patient records
> with real email addresses etc. You have just posted these to several
> hundred people on the internet.
> 
> I suspect that is a breach of data protection legislation.
> Please take care of personal data. (Of course the data may have
> been anonymized before you got it, but it doesn't look like it!)
> 
I wonder about this, because I can't find anything that looks like 
patient records. All the email adresses I looked at in that file seemed 
to be adresses of the institutions where the research was done. On the 
other hand I did only look at a handful.

Moreover all the records have a field "PST" containing "aheadofprint",
"epublish" or "ppublish". So I think they all are either already 
published or going to be. The whole file reminds me strongly of the 
contents of bibliographic databases (medline is mentioned in many of them).

> It's also far more than was necessary to illustrate the file format.
> Just three or four records worth would have been sufficient, and you
> could have edited the contents to remove personal data. Some people pay
> for their data by the byte...
> 

That's very true. And finding a good mix of typical and less typical 
records might help towards parsing them as needed.

Greetings
Sibylle