Best way to retrieve variable values from a text file?

Question

Referring on this question, I have a similar -but not the same- problem..

On my way, I\'ll have some text file, structured like:

var_a: \'home\'
var_         


        

Answer 1

If your data has a regular structure you can read a file in line by line and populate your favorite container. For example:

Let's say your data has 3 variables: x, y, i.

A file contains n of these data, each variable on its own line (3 lines per record). Here are two records:

384
198
0
255
444
2

Here's how you read your file data into a list. (Reading from text, so cast accordingly.)

data = []
try:
    with open(dataFilename, "r") as file:
        # read data until end of file
        x = file.readline()
        while x != "":
            x = int(x.strip())    # remove \n, cast as int

            y = file.readline()
            y = int(y.strip())

            i = file.readline()
            i = int(i.strip())

            data.append([x,y,i])

            x = file.readline()

except FileNotFoundError as e:
    print("File not found:", e)

return(data)