I have a file with an array written in it, like:
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
How can I read it and get the array in a variable with python? So far what happens is that I just get the string.
def get_data():
myfile = open('random_array.txt', 'r')
data = myfile.read().replace('\n', '')
return data
If the format is always like that, one way is to use json.loads:
>>> s = "[1,2,3,4]"
>>> import json
>>> json.loads(s)
[1, 2, 3, 4]
This has the advantage that you can use any space between the commas, you can use floats and ints in the text, and so on.
So, in your case you could do this:
import json
def get_data():
with open("random_array.txt", "r") as f:
return json.load(f)
In this particular case it is better to use the json module, as it seems your array uses the same format, but in general you can do something like this:
def get_data(filename):
with open(filename, 'r') as f:
return [int(x) for x in f.read().strip('[]\n').split(',')]
This should do the trick:
def get_data():
myfile = open('random_array.txt', 'r')
data = myfile.read().strip()
data = data[1:len(data)-1]
splitted = data.split(", ")
return splitted
This removes the beginning and trailing "[]" and then splits the string on each ", ", leaving you with an array of strings that are exactly the numbers.
int(data[i]). But yes indeed, the json-parser method is more elegant.