On Saturday, 20 February 2016 09:54:15 UTC+2, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 10:53 pm, wrong.addres...@gmail.com wrote: > > >> See http://nedbatchelder.com/text/python-parsers.html for a list of > >> parsers that can do all sorts for you. Or the stdlib re module > > > > I am an engineer, and do not understand most of the terminology used > > there. > > Google, or the search engine of your choice, is your friend. > > https://duckduckgo.com/html/ > > https://startpage.com/eng/? > > > Wikipedia even more so: Wikipedia has lots of good, useful articles on > computing concepts. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Computing > > And use the search box visible at the top of every page. > > Or ask here. > > > > > And do I need something fancy to read a line of numbers? Should it > > not be built into the language? > > In your own words: > > "I will have to read data given to me by people, which may not come in nice > formats like CSV" > > I trust that you don't expect the language to come with pre-written > functions to read numbers in every imaginable format. If you do, you will > be disappointed -- no language could possible do this. > > To answer your question "Do I need something fancy...?", no, of course not, > reading a line of numbers from a text file is easy. > > with open("numbers.txt", "r") as f: > for line in f: > numbers = [int(s) for s in split(line)] >
This looks good enough. This does not seem complicated (although I still understand almost nothing of what is written). I was simply not expressing myself in a way you people would understand. > > will read and convert integer-valued numbers separated by whitespace like: > > 123 654 9374 1 -45 3625 > > > one line at a time. You can then collate them for later use, or process them > as you go. If they're floating point numbers, change the call to int() to a > call to float(). > And I guess if the first three numbers are integers and the fourth is a float, then also there must be some equally straightforward way. Thanks for this explanation, which changes my view about reading numbers in Python. > > > > > > -- > Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
