reading a specific column from file

[cesco]

Hi,

I have a file containing four columns of data separated by tabs (\t)
and I'd like to read a specific column from it (say the third). Is
there any simple way to do this in Python?

I've found quite interesting the linecache module but unfortunately
that is (to my knowledge) only working on lines, not columns.

Any suggestion?

Thanks and regards
Francesco

 

[A.T.Hofkamp]

Hi,

I have a file containing four columns of data separated by tabs (\t)
and I'd like to read a specific column from it (say the third). Is
there any simple way to do this in Python?

I've found quite interesting the linecache module but unfortunately
that is (to my knowledge) only working on lines, not columns.

Any suggestion?

the csv module may do what you want.

 

[Fredrik Lundh]

I have a file containing four columns of data separated by tabs (\t)
and I'd like to read a specific column from it (say the third). Is
there any simple way to do this in Python?

use the "split" method and plain old indexing:

for line in open("file.txt"):
columns = line.split("\t")
print columns[2] # indexing starts at zero

also see the "csv" module, which can read all sorts of
comma/semicolon/tab-separated spreadsheet-style files.

I've found quite interesting the linecache module

the "linecache" module seems to be quite popular on comp.lang.python
these days, but it's designed for a very specific purpose (displaying
Python code in tracebacks), and is a really lousy way to read text files
in the general case. please unlearn.

</F>

 

[Chris]

Hi,

I have a file containing four columns of data separated by tabs (\t)
and I'd like to read a specific column from it (say the third). Is
there any simple way to do this in Python?

I've found quite interesting the linecache module but unfortunately
that is (to my knowledge) only working on lines, not columns.

Any suggestion?

Thanks and regards
Francesco

for (i, each_line) in enumerate(open('input_file.txt','rb')):
try:
column_3 = each_line.split('\t')[2].strip()
except IndexError:
print 'Not enough columns on line %i of file.' % (i+1)
continue

do_something_with_column_3()

 

[Peter Otten]

the csv module may do what you want.

Here's an example:
alpha beta gamma delta
one two three for

records = csv.reader(open("tmp.csv"), delimiter="\t")
[record[2] for record in records]

['gamma', 'three']

Peter

 

[Ivan Novick]

Hi,

I have a file containing four columns of data separated by tabs (\t)
and I'd like to read a specific column from it (say the third). Is
there any simple way to do this in Python?

You say you would like to "read" a specific column. I wonder if you
meant read all the data and then just seperate out the 3rd column or
if you really mean only do disk IO for the 3rd column of data and
thereby making your read faster. The second seems more interesting
but much harder and I wonder if any one has any ideas. As for the
just filtering out the third column, you have been given many
suggestions already.

Regards,
Ivan Novick
http://www.0x4849.net

 

[Reedick, Andrew]

-----Original Message-----

From: [email protected] [mailtoython-
[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ivan Novick
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 12:46 PM
To: (e-mail address removed)
Subject: Re: reading a specific column from file


You say you would like to "read" a specific column. I wonder if you
meant read all the data and then just seperate out the 3rd column or
if you really mean only do disk IO for the 3rd column of data and
thereby making your read faster. The second seems more interesting
but much harder and I wonder if any one has any ideas.

Do what databases do. If the columns are stored with a fixed size on
disk, then you can simply compute the offset and seek to it. If the
columns are of variable size, then you need to store (and maintain) the
offsets in some kind of index.



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[Hai Vu]

Here is another suggestion:

col = 2 # third column
filename = '4columns.txt'
third_column = [line[:-1].split('\t')[col] for line in open(filename,
'r')]

third_column now contains a list of items in the third column.

This solution is great for small files (up to a couple of thousand of
lines). For larger file, performance could be a problem, so you might
need a different solution.

 

[John Machin]

Here is another suggestion:

col = 2 # third column
filename = '4columns.txt'
third_column = [line[:-1].split('\t')[col] for line in open(filename,
'r')]

third_column now contains a list of items in the third column.

This solution is great for small files (up to a couple of thousand of
lines). For larger file, performance could be a problem, so you might
need a different solution.

Using the maxsplit arg could speed it up a little:

line[:-1].split('\t', col+1)[col]