Convert tabbed text to html unordered list?

Question

I\'m a beginner programmer so this question might sound trivial: I have some text files containg tab-delimited text like:

A
    B
    C
        D
        E
<         


        

Answer 1

The algorithm is simple. You take the depth level of a line that is indicated with a tab \t and shift the next bullet to the right \t+\t or to the left \t\t-\t or leave it at the same level \t.

Make sure your "in.txt" contains tabs or replace indent with tabs if you copy it from here. If indent is made of blank spaces nothing works. And the separator is a blank line at the end. You can change it in the code, if you want.

J.F. Sebastian's solution is fine but doesn't process unicode.

Create a text file "in.txt" in UTF-8 encoding:

qqq
    www
    www
        яяя
        яяя
    ыыы
    ыыы
qqq
qqq

and run the script "ul.py". The script will create the "out.html" and open it in Firefox.

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

# The script exports a tabbed list from string into a HTML unordered list.

import io, subprocess, sys

f=io.open('in.txt', 'r',  encoding='utf8')
s=f.read()
f.close()

#---------------------------------------------

def ul(s):

    L=s.split('\n\n')

    s='\n\
'

    for p in L:
        e=''
        if p.find('\t') != -1:

            l=p.split('\n')
            depth=0
            e='
'
            i=0

            for line in l:
                if len(line) >0:
                    a=line.split('\t')
                    d=len(a)-1

                    if depth==d:
                        e=e+'
'+line+'
'


                    elif depth < d:
                        i=i+1
                        e=e+'
'+line+'
'
                        depth=d


                    elif depth > d:
                        e=e+'
'*(depth-d)+'
'+line+'
'
                        depth=d
                        i=depth


            e=e+'
'*i+'