How to include multiple find, replace conditions in Python script

Question

I have to replace multiple patterns and the piece of code is same for all. But, when I included it in the same .py file, all the patterns added aren't parsed and replaced. Is there a way to achieve this without having to create multiple .py files. Two samples added below, but I have nearly 7-8 conditions like this. I am using Python 3. Can anyone help please?

import glob
for filepath in glob.iglob('C:/Users/sh001/Desktop/tag/**/*.xml', recursive=True):
        with open(filepath) as file:
           s = file.read()
        s = s.replace('</em>', '</i>')
        with open(filepath, "w") as file:
             file.write(s)

import glob
for filepath in glob.iglob('C:/Users/sh001/Desktop/tag/**/*.xml', recursive=True):
        with open(filepath) as file:
           s = file.read()
        s = s.replace('</em>', '</i>')
        with open(filepath, "w") as file:
             file.write(s)

In addition, I also get UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x9d in position 1282: character maps to <undefined> error. Including encoding="utf-8" did not help. — Shilpa
– Shilpa, Commented May 8, 2020 at 12:34

Hampus Larsson · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-08 12:52:11Z

1

What you can do, is to remove the "replacing" logic and put that inside of a function where you can give it the strings you want to change.

import glob

def replacer(filepath, to_replace, value):
    with open(filepath, "r", encoding="utf-8") as file:
        s=file.read()
    s=s.replace(to_replace, value)
    with open(filepath, "w", encoding="utf-8") as file:
        file.write(s)


for filepath in glob.iglob("./testFolder/*.xml", recursive=True):
    replacer(filepath=filepath, to_replace="<em>", value="<i>")
    replacer(filepath=filepath, to_replace="</em>", value="</i>")
    replacer(filepath=filepath, to_replace="<h1>", value="<h2>")
    replacer(filepath=filepath, to_replace="</h1>", value="</h2>")

While I loop over the files, I call all the replacements one after another, so each file has the same "replacements" done to them.

I have two files in the folder testFolder, which are test1.xml:

<em>
    Testabc
</em>

test2.xml:

<em>
    ”Rock'n'Roll”
</em>
<em>
    totally a new tag!    
</em>
<h1>
    headers are hard!
</h1>

See that test2.xml contains ” above? That is the character that charmap can't find a translation for. Inside of replacer I set the encoding for both reading and writing to utf-8 and it stops it from raising an error.

answered May 8, 2020 at 12:52

Hampus Larsson

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1 Comment

Shilpa Over a year ago

Just tested the code you shared and it worked beautifully. Thanks.

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