I am trying to export a multi dimensional list to some external file and then later import the said list from that same external file to use in different program.
How do I go about doing this?
An example list would be something like this:
A=[[[1,1,1],[1,1,2]],
[[1,2,1],[1,2,2],[1,2,3]],
[[1,3,1]]]
It doesn't necessarily have to be a text file, if there any file type more suitable to what I am attempting let me know.
You can use the built-in json package. When writing, you convert the data to a json string using json.dumps(), then you can read the data using json.loads().
import json
def writeList(file, data):
with open(file, 'w') as f:
f.write(json.dumps(data))
def readList(file):
with open(file, 'r') as f:
return json.loads(f.read())
if __name__ == '__main__':
# File extension can be whatever you want
A = [[[1,1,1],[1,1,2]], [[1,2,1],[1,2,2],[1,2,3]], [[1,3,1]]]
filename = 'myfile.json'
writeList(filename, A)
print(readList(filename))
By far the easiest method is to just pickle the object you want to save. This is a super easy way to save and load objects in python.
import pickle
A=[[[1,1,1],[1,1,2]],
[[1,2,1],[1,2,2],[1,2,3]],
[[1,3,1]]]
# Save the object
with open('filename.pkl', 'w'):
pickle.dump(A, f)
It is as easily loaded when you need it
import pickle
with open('filename.pkl', 'rb') as f:
B = pickle.load(f)