Re: [Tutor] read line x from a file

[Orri Ganel]

J. M. Strother wrote: I have  a text file containing 336 records. I can read and print out the whole file without any problem. What I want to do is read and print out one record only (chosen at random). So I need to get to record x, select it, and then print it (or store it in a variable). Can anyone tell me now to do this? I'm new to Python and programming, so sorry if this is very basic. Thanks. jon _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist  -  Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor Well, one way to do this is to count newlines, assuming you know what newline character your system uses.  For example (UNTESTED): >>> test = open("test.txt","r")   ## open the file >>> newline = [] >>> tfile = test.read() >>> for i in range(len(tfile)):   ## instead of 'for char in tfile'        if tfile[i] == '\n':      ## to make the index of each newline           newline.append(i)      ## easier to find >>> import random >>> newl = random.choice(newline) >>> print tfile[newl:tfile[newl:].index('\n')]   ## prints tfile from the ## randomly selected newline index to the next newline index, or one line ## prints data here >>> test.close() Now, this might not work, depending on whether or not '\n' is treated as a single character in this case. If not, you have to do a whole lot of the same sort of slicing as i did on the print line in order to find each successive newline (with tfile.index("\n")). HTH, Orri -- Email: singingxduck AT gmail DOT com AIM: singingxduck Programming Python for the fun of it.

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