How to read a text file into a string variable and strip newlines?

Question

I use the following code segment to read a file in python:

with open (\"data.txt\", \"r\") as myfile:
    data=myfile.readlines()

Input fil

Answer 1

This works: Change your file to:

LLKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNN GGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEE

Then:

file = open("file.txt")
line = file.read()
words = line.split()

This creates a list named words that equals:

['LLKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNN', 'GGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEE']

That got rid of the "\n". To answer the part about the brackets getting in your way, just do this:

for word in words: # Assuming words is the list above
    print word # Prints each word in file on a different line

Or:

print words[0] + ",", words[1] # Note that the "+" symbol indicates no spaces
#The comma not in parentheses indicates a space

This returns:

LLKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNN, GGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEE

Answer 2

python3: Google "list comphrension" if the square bracket syntax is new to you.

 with open('data.txt') as f:
     lines = [ line.strip( ) for line in list(f) ]

Answer 3

To remove line breaks using Python you can use replace function of a string.

This example removes all 3 types of line breaks:

my_string = open('lala.json').read()
print(my_string)

my_string = my_string.replace("\r","").replace("\n","")
print(my_string)

Example file is:

{
  "lala": "lulu",
  "foo": "bar"
}

You can try it using this replay scenario:

https://repl.it/repls/AnnualJointHardware

Answer 4

I don't feel that anyone addressed the [ ] part of your question. When you read each line into your variable, because there were multiple lines before you replaced the \n with '' you ended up creating a list. If you have a variable of x and print it out just by

x

or print(x)

or str(x)

You will see the entire list with the brackets. If you call each element of the (array of sorts)

x[0] then it omits the brackets. If you use the str() function you will see just the data and not the '' either. str(x[0])

Answer 5

Try the following:

with open('data.txt', 'r') as myfile:
    data = myfile.read()

    sentences = data.split('\\n')
    for sentence in sentences:
        print(sentence)

Caution: It does not remove the \n. It is just for viewing the text as if there were no \n

Answer 6

I'm surprised nobody mentioned splitlines() yet.

with open ("data.txt", "r") as myfile:
    data = myfile.read().splitlines()

Variable data is now a list that looks like this when printed:

['LLKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNN', 'GGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEE']

Note there are no newlines (\n).

At that point, it sounds like you want to print back the lines to console, which you can achieve with a for loop:

for line in data:
    print line