walterbyrd wrote: > This is the first real python program I have ever worked on. What I > want to do is: > 1) count identical records in a cvs file > 2) create a new file with quantities instead duplicate records > 3) open the new file in ms-excel > > For example, I will start with a file like: > > 1001 > 1012 > 1008 > 1012 > 1001 > 1001 > > and finish with a file like: > > 1001,3 > 1008,1 > 1012,2 > > What I need to know: > 1) is there a function in python that will sort a file into another > file. Something like: > sort file1.txt > file2.txt from the DOS command line. I know there is > also a similar "sort" funtion in Unix.
import os os.system('sort file1.txt > file2.txt') > 2) is there a function in python that will correctly load a csv file > into an excel spreadsheet, > and open that spreadsheet. What's with the excel files? You must be in industry. Excel opens csv files, no problem. In Mac OS X, you can do this: os.system('open -a /Applications/Excel %s' % 'my_file.csv') It probably requires a nauseating journey through a bunch of hoops to do the equivalent in window$. But you haven't specified your operating system, so I optimistically assume a best-case (OS X) and not a worst-case (window$). If worst-case, I'm truly sorry for your misfortune. > 3) I will probably be working with 50 items, or less, would it be best > for me to do this with a > multi-diminsional array? For example: sort the file, read a rec into > the array, if the next rec is the same then incr the count, otherwise > add a new rec with a count of 1. Then write the array to a file? > Ah, a real question. Use a dict: if adict.has_key(some_key): adict[some_key] += 1 else: adict[some_key] = 1 James -- James Stroud UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics Box 951570 Los Angeles, CA 90095 http://www.jamesstroud.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list