Ok after a minute of thought I did solve my second question by simply changing my RE to
(r'(\d{1}[\s,.]+\d{3}[\s,.]+\d{3})') but still haven't gotten he first one. On Mar 31, 2007, at 1:39 PM, Jay Mutter III wrote: > I have the following that I am using to extract "numbers' from a file > > > prompt1 = raw_input('What is the file from which you would like a > list of patent numbers? ') > p1 = open(prompt1,'rU') > s = p1.readlines() > prompt2 = raw_input('What is the name of the file to which you > would like to save the list of patent numbers? ') > p2 = open(prompt2,'aU') > patno = re.compile(r'(\d{1})[\s,.]+(\d{3})[\s,.]+(\d{3})') > for line in s: > jay = patno.findall(line) > print jay > > which yields the following > > [('1', '337', '912')] > [('1', '354', '756')] > [('1', '360', '297')] > [('1', '328', '232')] > [('1', '330', '123')] > [('1', '362', '944')] > [('1', '350', '461')] > [('1', '355', '991')] > [('1', '349', '385')] > [('1', '350', '521')] > [('1', '336', '542')] > [('1', '354', '922')] > [('1', '338', '268')] > [('1', '353', '682')] > [('1', '343', '241')] > [('1', '359', '852')] > [('1', '342', '483')] > [('1', '347', '068')] > [('1', '331', '450')] > > if i try to write to a file instead of print to the screen using > p2.write(jay) > i get the message > > Traceback (most recent call last): > File "patentno.py", line 12, in ? > p2.write(jay) > TypeError: argument 1 must be string or read-only character buffer, > not list > > I f I try writelines i get > > Traceback (most recent call last): > File "patentno.py", line 12, in ? > p2.writelines(jay) > TypeError: writelines() argument must be a sequence of strings > jay-mutter-iiis-computer:~/documents/programming/python/patents jlm1$ > > > So what do i have above ? A list of tuples? > > How do I send the output to a file? > Is there a way to get the output as > > 1337912 instead of [('1', '337', '912')] ? > > And as always thanks in advance for the help. > > jay Mutter > _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor