smart way to read multiple variables from textfile in python

Question

I\'m trying to load multiple vectors and matrices (for numpy) that are stored in a single text file. The file looks like this:

%VectorA
1 2 3 4
%MatrixA
1 2          


        

Answer 1

from StringIO import StringIO
mytext='''%VectorA
1 2 3 4
%MatrixA
1 2 3
4 5 6
%VectorB
3 4 5 6 7'''

myfile=StringIO(mytext)
mydict={}
for x in myfile.readlines():
    if x.startswith('%'):
        mydict.setdefault(x.strip('%').strip(),[])
        lastkey=x.strip('%').strip()
    else:
        mydict[lastkey].append([int(x1) for x1 in x.split(' ')])

above gives mydict as:

{'MatrixA': [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]],
 'VectorA': [[1, 2, 3, 4]],
 'VectorB': [[3, 4, 5, 6, 7]]}