to parse chat conversations stored in a file

Question

poem = '''\
me:hello dear
me:hyyy
asha:edaaaa
'''

f=open('poem.txt','r')
arr=[]
arr1=[]
varr=[]
darr=[]
i=0
j=1
for line in f.read().split('\n'):
    arr.append(line)
    i+=1
f.close()
#print arr[0]
#print arr[1]
#print arr[2]

text=arr[0].split(':')
#print text
line=text[0]
#print line
arr1.append(text[1])

for i in range(1,len(arr)):
    text=arr[i].split(':')
    if(line==text[0]):
        #print text[1]
        arr1.append(text[1])
    else:
        if(j==1):
            j+=1
            varr[j]=text[0] # this is not working
            darr[j]=text[1]
            print len(varr)
f.close()
print arr1

Answer 1

You are attempting to assign to varr[2], but varr is an empty list, so you would get an index error

There are a number of ways to fix this code, but it's not clear to me what the code is supposed to do

Nosklo's answer seemed reasonable to me, until I thought about it some more. I am not sure there is much point grouping the lines by the name since it means that the overall structure of the file is lost.

Here is how to simply parse the file into a list which you can manipulate later

result = []
with open('poem.txt') as f:
    for line in f:
        result.append(line.partition(':')[::2])

print result

Answer 2

CRYSTAL BALL MODE ON

from collections import defaultdict
result = defaultdict(list)

with open('chat.log') as f:
    for line in f:
        nick, msg = line.split(':', 1)
        result[nick].append(msg)

print result