How to delete specific strings from a file?

Question

I have a data file (unstructured, messy file) from which I have to scrub specific list of strings (delete strings).

Here is what I am doing but with no result:

Answer 1

To the OP, Ross Patterson's method above works perfectly for me, i.e.

infile = "messy_data_file.txt"
outfile = "cleaned_file.txt"

delete_list = ["word_1", "word_2", "word_n"]
fin = open(infile)
fout = open(outfile, "w+")
for line in fin:
    for word in delete_list:
        line = line.replace(word, "")
    fout.write(line)
fin.close()
fout.close()

Example:

I have a file named messy_data_file.txt that includes the following words (animals), not necessarily on the same line. Like this:

Goat
Elephant
Horse Donkey Giraffe
Lizard
Bird
Fish

When I modify the code to read (actually just adding the words to delete to the "delete_list" line):

infile = "messy_data_file.txt"
outfile = "cleaned_file.txt"

delete_list = ["Donkey", "Goat", "Fish"]
fin = open(infile)
fout = open(outfile, "w+")
for line in fin:
    for word in delete_list:
       line = line.replace(word, "")
    fout.write(line)
fin.close()
fout.close()

The resulting "cleaned_file.txt" looks like this:

Elephant
Horse  Giraffe
Lizard
Bird

There is a blank line where "Goat" used to be (where, oddly, removing "Donkey" did not) but for my purposes, this works fine.

I also add input("Press Enter to exit...") the the very end of the code to keep the command line window from opening and slamming shut on me when I'm double-clicking the remove_text.py file to run it, but take note that you'll catch no errors this way.

To do that I run it from the command line (where C:\Just_Testing is the directory where all my files are, i.e. remove_text.py and messy_text.txt) like this:

C:\Just_Testing\>py remove_text.py 

or

C:\Just_Testing>python remove_text.py 

works exactly the same.

Of course, like when writing HTML, I guess it never hurts to use a fully qualified path when running py or python from somewhere other than the directory you happen to be sitting in, such as:

C:\Windows\System32\>python C:\Users\Me\Desktop\remove_text.py

Of course in the code it would be:

infile = "C:\Users\Me\Desktop\messy_data_file.txt"
outfile = "C:\Users\Me\Desktop\cleaned_file.txt"

Be careful to use the same fully qualified path to place your newly created cleaned_file.txt in or it will be created wherever you may be and that could cause confusion when looking for it.

Personally, I have the PATH in my Environment Variables set to point to all my Python installs i.e. C:\Python3.5.3, C:\Python2.7.13, etc. so I can run py or python from anywhere.

Anyway, I hope making fine-tuning adjustments to this code from Mr. Patterson can get you exactly what you need. :)

.