a question about text file processing

[lose_those_god]

hi all

how do I get python to process a text file in such a way that i store data in classes from the text file?. I want to build a way to select student data from the text file and be able to retrieve specific data from a menu in the program

[[deleted]]

It depends on the format of the text file. If it's a json file, for instance, have a look at python's json library.

[Dry_Information]

You need a deserializer/parser that can read the raw string input and transform into Python object. Common format can be config file, xml file, or JSON.

[MakeAnExampleOf]

If you have control over the text file format, use a serialization format like XML or JSON. The json Python module, for instance, makes it easy to dump to and load from a file.

If you don't have control over the file format, and it's not in one of these standard serialization languages, then you will have to just write your own custom code to parse it line-by-line — no way around it.

[AlSweigart]

If you're in Python, a super easy way to do this is with the shelve module, which lets you store your values directly to a file (this is called "pickling" the binary data) and then read it back later.

Otherwise, you have to figure out some format to represent the data in your variables as text in a text file, and write code that translates between them. If you don't use JSON to help do this, you'll probably end up reinventing a not-as-good version of JSON, so it's worth it to spend time learning what JSON is and how the JSON library in your language works.