Text File data parsing lines and output as columns

With a short Perl one-liner :

$ perl -ne 'END{print "\n"}chomp; /^$/ ? print "\n" : print "$_\t\t"' file.txt

OUTPUT

Name: John Doe1         address : somewhere             phone: 123-123-1234
Name: John Doe2         address : somewhere             phone: 123-123-1233
Name: John Doe3         address : somewhere             phone: 123-123-1232

Using paste, we can join the lines in the file:

$ paste -s -d"\t\t\t\n" file
Name: John Doe1 address : somewhere     phone: 123-123-1234
Name: John Doe2 address : somewhere     phone: 123-123-1233
Name: John Doe3 address : somewhere     phone: 123-123-1232

This seems to do basically what you want:

information = 'information'  # file path

with open(information, 'rt') as input:
    data = input.read()

data = data.split('\n\n')

for group in data:
    print group.replace('\n', '     ')

Output:

Name: John Doe1     address : somewhere     phone: 123-123-1234
Name: John Doe2     address : somewhere     phone: 123-123-1233
Name: John Doe3     address : somewhere     phone: 123-123-1232     

I know you did not mention awk, but it solves your problem nicely:

awk 'BEGIN {RS="";FS="\n"} {print $1,$2,$3}' data.txt

Most of the solutions here are just reformatting the data in the file that you are reading. Maybe that is all that you want.

If you actually want to parse the data, put it in a data structure.

This example in Python:

data="""\
Name: John Doe2
address : 123 Main St, Los Angeles, CA 95002
phone: 213-123-1234

Name: John Doe1
address : 145 Pearl St, La Jolla, CA 92013
phone: 858-123-1233

Name: Billy Bob Doe3
address : 454 Heartland St, Mobile, AL 00103
phone: 205-123-1232""".split('\n\n')      # just a fill-in for your file
                                          # you would use `with open(file) as data:`

addr={}
w0,w1,w2=0,0,0             # these keep track of the max width of the field 
for line in data:
    fields=[e.split(':')[1].strip() for e in [f for f in line.split('\n')]]
    nam=fields[0].split()
    name=nam[-1]+', '+' '.join(nam[0:-1])
    addr[(name,fields[2])]=fields
    w0,w1,w2=[max(t) for t in zip(map(len,fields),(w0,w1,w2))]

Now you have the freedom to sort, change the format, put in database, etc.

This prints your format with that data, sorted:

for add in sorted(addr.keys()):
    print 'Name: {0:{w0}} Address: {1:{w1}} phone: {2:{w2}}'.format(*addr[add],w0=w0,w1=w1,w2=w2)

Prints:

Name: John Doe1      Address: 145 Pearl St, La Jolla, CA 92013   phone: 858-123-1233
Name: John Doe2      Address: 123 Main St, Los Angeles, CA 95002 phone: 213-123-1234
Name: Billy Bob Doe3 Address: 454 Heartland St, Mobile, AL 00103 phone: 205-123-1232

That is sorted by the last name, first name used in the dict key.

Now print it sorted by area code:

for add in sorted(addr.keys(),key=lambda x: addr[x][2] ):
    print 'Name: {0:{w0}} Address: {1:{w1}} phone: {2:{w2}}'.format(*addr[add],w0=w0,w1=w1,w2=w2)

Prints:

Name: Billy Bob Doe3 Address: 454 Heartland St, Mobile, AL 00103 phone: 205-123-1232
Name: John Doe2      Address: 123 Main St, Los Angeles, CA 95002 phone: 213-123-1234
Name: John Doe1      Address: 145 Pearl St, La Jolla, CA 92013   phone: 858-123-1233

But, since you have the data in a indexed dictionary, you can print it as a table instead sorted by zip code:

# print table header
print '|{0:^{w0}}|{1:^{w1}}|{2:^{w2}}|'.format('Name','Address','Phone',w0=w0+2,w1=w1+2,w2=w2+2)
print '|{0:^{w0}}|{1:^{w1}}|{2:^{w2}}|'.format('----','-------','-----',w0=w0+2,w1=w1+2,w2=w2+2)
# print data sorted by last field of the address - probably a zip code
for add in sorted(addr.keys(),key=lambda x: addr[x][1].split()[-1]):
    print '|{0:>{w0}}|{1:>{w1}}|{2:>{w2}}|'.format(*addr[add],w0=w0+2,w1=w1+2,w2=w2+2)

Prints:

|      Name      |              Address               |    Phone     |
|      ----      |              -------               |    -----     |
|  Billy Bob Doe3|  454 Heartland St, Mobile, AL 00103|  205-123-1232|
|       John Doe1|    145 Pearl St, La Jolla, CA 92013|  858-123-1233|
|       John Doe2|  123 Main St, Los Angeles, CA 95002|  213-123-1234|

You should be able to parse this using the split() method on a string:

line = "Name: John Doe1"
key, value = line.split(":")
print(key) # Name
print(value) # John Doe1

You can iterate over lines and print them in columns like this -

for line in open("/path/to/data"):
    if len(line) != 1:
        # remove \n from line's end and make print statement
        # skip the \n it adds in the end to continue in our column
        print "%s\t\t" % line.strip(),
    else:
        # re-use the blank lines to end our column
        print

#!/usr/bin/env python

def parse(inputfile, outputfile):
    dictInfo = {'Name':None, 'address':None, 'phone':None}
    for line in inputfile:
    if line.startswith('Name'):
        dictInfo['Name'] = line.split(':')[1].strip()
    elif line.startswith('address'):
        dictInfo['address'] = line.split(':')[1].strip()
    elif line.startswith('phone'):
        dictInfo['phone'] = line.split(':')[1].strip()
        s = 'Name: '+dictInfo['Name']+'\t'+'address: '+dictInfo['address'] \
            +'\t'+'phone: '+dictInfo['phone']+'\n'
        outputfile.write(s)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    with open('output.txt', 'w') as outputfile:
    with open('infomation.txt') as inputfile:
        parse(inputfile, outputfile)

A solution using sed.

cat input.txt | sed '/^$/d' | sed 'N; s:\n:\t\t:; N; s:\n:\t\t:'

1. First pipe, sed '/^$/d', removes the blank lines.
2. Second pipe, sed 'N; s:\n:\t\t:; N; s:\n:\t\t:', combines the lines.

Name: John Doe1     address : somewhere     phone: 123-123-1234
Name: John Doe2     address : somewhere     phone: 123-123-1233
Name: John Doe3     address : somewhere     phone: 123-123-1232

In Python:

results = []
cur_item = None

with open('/root/docs/information') as f:
    for line in f.readlines():
        key, value = line.split(':', 1)
        key = key.strip()
        value = value.strip()

        if key == "Name":
            cur_item = {}
            results.append(cur_item)
        cur_item[key] = value

for item in results:
    # print item