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Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 12:12:14 +0200
From: Laszlo Nagy <gandalf@shopzeus.com>
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To: Huso <hussain.a.rasheed@gmail.com>, python-list@python.org
Subject: Re: Extract Text Table From File
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On 2012-08-27 11:53, Huso wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am trying to extract some text table data from a log file. I am trying different methods, but I don't seem to get anything to work. I am kind of new to python as well. Hence, appreciate if someone could help me out.

#
# Write test data to test.txt
#

data = """
ROUTES TRAFFIC RESULTS, LSR
TRG  MP   DATE   TIME
  37  17 120824   0000

R         TRAFF   NBIDS   CCONG   NDV  ANBLO   MHTIME  NBANSW
AABBCCO     6.4     204     0.0   115    1.0    113.4     144
AABBCCI     3.0     293           115    1.0     37.0     171
DDEEFFO     0.2       5     0.0    59    0.0    107.6       3
EEFFEEI     0.0       0            59    0.0      0.0       0
HHGGFFO     0.0       0     0.0    30    0.0      0.0       0
HHGGFFI     0.3      15            30    0.0     62.2       4
END
"""
fout = open("test.txt","wb+")
fout.write(data)
fout.close()

#
# This is how you iterate over a file and process its lines
#
fin = open("test.txt","r")
for line in fin:
     # This is one possible way to extract values.
     values = line.strip().split()
     print values


This will print:

[]
['ROUTES', 'TRAFFIC', 'RESULTS,', 'LSR']
['TRG', 'MP', 'DATE', 'TIME']
['37', '17', '120824', '0000']
[]
['R', 'TRAFF', 'NBIDS', 'CCONG', 'NDV', 'ANBLO', 'MHTIME', 'NBANSW']
['AABBCCO', '6.4', '204', '0.0', '115', '1.0', '113.4', '144']
['AABBCCI', '3.0', '293', '115', '1.0', '37.0', '171']
['DDEEFFO', '0.2', '5', '0.0', '59', '0.0', '107.6', '3']
['EEFFEEI', '0.0', '0', '59', '0.0', '0.0', '0']
['HHGGFFO', '0.0', '0', '0.0', '30', '0.0', '0.0', '0']
['HHGGFFI', '0.3', '15', '30', '0.0', '62.2', '4']
['END']


The "values" list in the last line contains these values. This will work 
only if you don't have spaces in your values. Otherwise you can use 
regular expressions to parse a line. See here:

http://docs.python.org/library/re.html

Since you did not give any specification on your file format, it would 
be hard to give a concrete program that parses your file(s)

Best,

     Laszlo