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Python Python Basics (2015) Letter Game App Letter Game Takeaways

Posted by thomas2017
thomas2017
1,342 Points

Python Letter Game Import and split words into list

Hello, I'm trying to import a list from another file to feed it into my letter game. This is how it appears in the note file apple, banana, orange

I tried several ways but it just doesn't work.

1st method gives me an error 'list' object has no attribute 'split'.

2nd method gives me: [['apple', ' banana', ' orange', '']]

       -I don't know if this is a list within a list or what, does that mean words was already a 
        list and I don't need to make it into a list?

3rd method: ['apple', 'banana', 'orange,']

         -I don't know why there is a comma at the end of orange

4th method: apple, banana, orange,

['a', 'p', 'p', 'l', 'e', ',', ' ', 'b', 'a', 'n', 'a', 'n', 'a', ',', ' ', 'o', 'r', 'a', 'n', 'g', 'e', ','] -on the first line I guess this is a string, but I thought I converted it to a list

5th method: ['apple', ' banana', ' orange', '']

I don't know why there is extra space before the word, and why there is a quote after orange

import os
import random
import sys
import csv

#1st method gives me an error 'list' object has no attribute 'split'.
file = open('letter_game_list.txt', 'r')
k = (file.readlines())
k.split(", ")
print(list(k))

#2nd method gives me: [['apple', ' banana', ' orange', '']]
words = [word.split(',') for word in open("letter_game_list.txt", "r").readlines()]
print(list(words))

#3rd method: ['apple', 'banana', 'orange,']
#I guess this is a string, but I thought I used list for word

with open('letter_game_list.txt', 'r') as f:
    for line in f:
        words = list(line.split(', '))
        print(words)
f.close()

#4th method: apple, banana, orange,
#['a', 'p', 'p', 'l', 'e', ',', ' ', 'b', 'a', 'n', 'a', 'n', 'a', ',', ' ', 'o', 'r', 'a', 'n', 'g', 'e', ',']
def get_file(words):
    try:
        file = open('letter_game_list.txt')
    except IOError:
        print("Unable to get the list from the file letter_game_list.txt")
        sys.exit()
    else:
        x = file.read()

        file.close()
    print(x)
#5th method:   ['apple', ' banana', ' orange', '']
with open('letter_game_list.txt', 'r') as csvfile:
    letter_list = csv.reader(csvfile)
    for row in letter_list:
        print(row)

2 Answers

Stuart Wright
Stuart Wright
41,120 Points
Stuart Wright
Stuart Wright
41,120 Points

I think something like this would work:

with open('letter_game_list.txt', 'r') as input_file:
    words = input_file.read().split(', ') # The split method creates a list so no need to do anything else

# If you want to print them out
for word in words:
    print(word)
thomas2017
thomas2017
1,342 Points

Thanks Stuart! Ohh I was wondering what if my list of words is not neatly arranged in in commas? Like what if there is accidently 2 spaces in between some 2 words. Now the spacing is all messed up. ex. apple,_orange, _ _banana

*Now it a split.(, ) would result in ['apple', 'orange', '_banana'] I used underscores to demonstrate blank spaces. Is there way to do splits that will pick up different types of situations? Where as sometimes there are multiple spaces, or that there is something else besides commas in between 2 words?

Stuart Wright
Stuart Wright
41,120 Points
Stuart Wright
Stuart Wright
41,120 Points

I added an extra line which would handle this:

with open('letter_game_list.txt', 'r') as input_file:
    words = input_file.read().split(', ')
    words = [word.strip() for word in words]

# If you want to print them out
for word in words:
    print(word)

The .strip() method removes all leading and trailing whitespace from a string.

For more complicated string pattern matching, you might need to start looking into regular expressions (there's a course on Python regular expressions here on Treehouse).