Writing/parsing a fixed width file using Python

Question

I\'m a newbie to Python and I\'m looking at using it to write some hairy EDI stuff that our supplier requires.

Basically they need an 80-character fixed width text f

Answer 1

I know this thread is quite old, but we use a library called django-copybook. It has nothing to do with django (anymore). We use it to go between fixed width cobol files and python. You create a class to define your fixed width record layout and can easy move between typed python objects and fixed width files:

USAGE:
class Person(Record):
    first_name = fields.StringField(length=20)
    last_name = fields.StringField(length=30)
    siblings = fields.IntegerField(length=2)
    birth_date = fields.DateField(length=10, format="%Y-%m-%d")

>>> fixedwidth_record = 'Joe                 Smith                         031982-09-11'
>>> person = Person.from_record(fixedwidth_record)
>>> person.first_name
'Joe'
>>> person.last_name
'Smith'
>>> person.siblings
3
>>> person.birth_date
datetime.date(1982, 9, 11)

It can also handle situations similar to Cobol's OCCURS functionality like when a particular section is repeated X times