title: Text File Parsing with Python
body: <p>I am trying to parse a series of text files and save them as CSV files using Python (2.7.3). All text files have a 4 line long header which needs to be stripped out. The data lines have various delimiters including " (quote), - (dash), : column, and blank space. I found it a pain to code it in C++ with all these different delimiters, so I decided to try it in Python hearing it is relatively easier to do compared to C/C++.</p>
  
  <p>I wrote a piece of code to test it for a single line of data and it works, however, I could not manage to make it work for the actual file. For parsing a single line I was using the text object and "replace" method. It looks like my current implementation reads the text file as a list, and there is no replace method for the list object.</p>
  
  <p>Being a novice in Python, I got stuck at this point. Any input would be appreciated!</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>
  
  <pre><code># function for parsing the data
  def data_parser(text, dic):
  for i, j in dic.iteritems():
      text = text.replace(i,j)
  return text
  
  # open input/output files
  
  inputfile = open('test.dat')
  outputfile = open('test.csv', 'w')
  
  my_text = inputfile.readlines()[4:] #reads to whole text file, skipping first 4 lines
  
  
  # sample text string, just for demonstration to let you know how the data looks like
  # my_text = '"2012-06-23 03:09:13.23",4323584,-1.911224,-0.4657288,-0.1166382,-0.24823,0.256485,"NAN",-0.3489428,-0.130449,-0.2440527,-0.2942413,0.04944348,0.4337797,-1.105218,-1.201882,-0.5962594,-0.586636'
  
  # dictionary definition 0-, 1- etc. are there to parse the date block delimited with dashes, and make sure the negative numbers are not effected
  reps = {'"NAN"':'NAN', '"':'', '0-':'0,','1-':'1,','2-':'2,','3-':'3,','4-':'4,','5-':'5,','6-':'6,','7-':'7,','8-':'8,','9-':'9,', ' ':',', ':':',' }
  
  txt = data_parser(my_text, reps)
  outputfile.writelines(txt)
  
  inputfile.close()
  outputfile.close()
  </code></pre>