I have a file which has the following format:
[
["unique_id1", {"cc":15, "dd":30}], ["unique_id2", {"cc": 184,"dd":10}], ...
]
I want to directly read the file and put data in a Python data structure. For now, I'm processing using regular expressions. Is there a command that I'm missing to read it directly?
This file format is probably JSON from what you've shown us.
You can parse it by doing
import json
out = json.load(file_object)
Either that or its a literal
out = eval(file_object.read())
OR (Preferred)
import ast
out = ast.literal_eval(file_object.read())
You can use literal_eval
import ast
f = open('myfile.txt')
print ast.literal_eval(f.read())
You should use ast.literal_eval(), it turns strings that contain Python objects, into Python objects:
>>> import ast
>>> l = ast.literal_eval('[1, 2, 3]')
>>> type(l)
<class 'list'>
>>> l
[1, 2, 3]
So you would read the data from your file and turn it into a list:
with open('file.txt') as infile:
data = ast.literal_eval(infile.read())
