I need help making a list.

I am trying to make a disorganized text file into a list suitable for use with another python program. The text file is a list of data seperated by a few spaces but not in standard columns or anything organized. The goal of this program is to read through the file using python and after each piece of data that I want there is a space, so I want to make a new line. The output should be a list of data with each term on one line. In addition there are some terms that I do not want. All the terms that I want start with "JJ".

Here is what i have so far. Note this does not run yet. I am looking for help finishing this program that will select all the terms starting with JJ and make a new line at the space after the JJ term. Thanks Robert

datafile = open ('C:\\textfile.txt', 'r')

line_list = line.split(" ")
for x in line_list:
    if x.startswith("JJ") : print line_list

EDIT: So i want to open the file called textfile and have python keep only the lines of data that start with "JJ". Additionaly I want each data to be on it's own line, which is why I want to seperate them using the space after each ilne of data? Is that clearer?

Is that the only line of code I need then?

Robert A. Fettikowski 2010-07-23 19:27:30

That will return a list of every item, separated by spaces, in the file with JJ at the front.

Blue Peppers 2010-07-23 19:33:14

@Blue Peppers: I think the example would look better spread over more than one line. One-liners are cute but not always easy to understand or maintain, especially in a teaching context.

Bryan Oakley 2010-07-23 19:49:41

Bryan, the loop version of this actually looks rather ugly (at least to me). With your reputation, you could always edit Peppers' post to include the multi-line version.

Wayne Werner 2010-07-23 20:09:32

ansaurus

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I need help making a list.

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