Split string within list into words in Python

Question

I'm a newbie in Python, and I need to write a code in Python that will read a text file, then split each words in it, sort it and print it out.

Here is the code I wrote:

fname = raw_input("Enter file name: ")
fh = open(fname)
lst = list()
words = list()


for line in fh:    

    line = line.strip()
    line.split()   
    lst.append(line)

lst.sort()
print lst

That's my output -

['Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon', 'But soft what light through yonder window breaks', 'It is the east and Juliet is the sun', 'Who is already sick and pale with grienter code herew', 'with', 'yonder']

However, when I try to split lst.split() it saying

List object has no attribute split

Please help!

Moses Koledoye · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-23 12:11:44Z

2

You should extend the new list with the splitted line, rather than attempt to split the strings after appending:

for line in fh:    
    line = line.strip()
    lst.extend(line.split())

answered Jan 23, 2017 at 12:11

Moses Koledoye

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user2390182 · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-23 12:48:41Z

0

The issue is split() does not magically mutate the string that is split into a list. You have to do sth with the return value.

for line in fh:    
    # line.split()  # expression has has no effect
    line = line.split()  # statement does
    # lst += line  # shortcut for loop underneath
    for token in line:
        lst = lst + [token]
        lst += [token]

The above is a solution that uses a nested loop and avoids append and extend. The whole line by line splitting and sorting can be done very concisely, however, with a nested generator expression:

print sorted(word for line in fh for word in line.strip().split())

edited Jan 23, 2017 at 12:48

answered Jan 23, 2017 at 12:15

user2390182

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1 Comment

Dmytro Over a year ago

The thing is that I we haven't covered extend() function yet, so I think I am not eligible to use it. I have a read a comment of my instructor that we need to use nested loop in this probelm...

al27091 · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-23 13:19:18Z

0

You can do:

fname = raw_input("Enter file name: ")
fh = open(fname, "r")
lines = list()
words = list()
for line in fh:    
    # get an array of words for this line
    words = line.split()
    for w in words: 
       lines.append(w)

lines.sort()
print lines

To avoid dups:

no_dups_list = list()
for w in lines:
   if w not in no_dups_list:
       no_dups_list.append(w)

edited Jan 23, 2017 at 13:19

answered Jan 23, 2017 at 12:17

al27091

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8 Comments

Dmytro Over a year ago

we haven't covere join() yet. All we can and need to use here is sort() and append(), it's mandatory

al27091 Over a year ago

Edited to use only sort and append ;) Hope this helps.

Dmytro Over a year ago

Thank you for the reply, however, I still get wrong result. I have - ['Arise and envious fair kill moon sun the ', 'But breaks light soft through what window yonder ', 'It Juliet and east is is sun the the ', 'Who already and grief is pale sick with '] instead of - ['Arise', 'But', 'It', 'Juliet', 'Who', 'already', 'and', 'breaks', 'east', 'envious', 'fair', 'grief', 'is', 'kill', 'light', 'moon', 'pale', 'sick', 'soft', 'sun', 'the', 'through', 'what', 'window', 'with', 'yonder']

al27091 Over a year ago

Ok I misunderstood what you asked. Now it should work as you expect.

Dmytro Over a year ago

thanks, now it works as it should. Just one more question - how to make it to avoid repeated words in a list?

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