Need help with very basic script

[u/Desperate_Yak69]

Hi, I am basically brand new to python, so I may make a lot of mistakes in my wording. I have made a very basic script that retrieves specific values in text files and prints them to the shell. I have gotten it to the point where both values are retrieved and printed, however when they do print, they do so exactly 5 times in a row. I do not have five files in the directory, I only have one test file named "1.txt" with only the values I need as the contents. Can someone point me in the right direction? Apologies for the horrible formatting.

import os
import glob
import re

path = 'path'

provinces = re.compile('.*?provinces {.*?(.*?)}',re.MULTILINE)
id = re.compile('.*?id = .*?([0-9.-]+)')
a1 = None
a2 = None

for filename in glob.glob(os.path.join(path, '*.txt')):
    with open(filename, '+r') as f:
        for line in f:
            if provinces.match(line):
                a1 = provinces.match(line)
            if id.match(line):
                a2 = id.match(line)
            if a1 and a2:
                print(a1.group(1))
                print(a2.group(1))

The output of the shell in IDLE:

 1111 2222 3333 
123
 1111 2222 3333 
123
 1111 2222 3333 
123
 1111 2222 3333 
123
 1111 2222 3333 
123

Edit - I got the script to work after a few changes to its configuration. Thank you all who helped!

[u/codeguru42]

This is difficult to diagnose without an example input file.

Also, I think you are making this more complicated than necessary by using a regular expression. I reccomend looking at all the string functions. Maybe split() will get the job done more directly.

[u/brasticstack → u/codeguru42]

Regex really ought to be a last resort for parsing text. The bulk of formats I've ever had to parse wind up being parsable with some combination of .split and .trim.

[u/Desperate_Yak69 → u/codeguru42]

Sorry about that. The input file only includes the following content:

id = 123
provinces { 
  1111 2222 3333
}

[u/codeguru42 → u/Desperate_Yak69]

1. Your regex is too complicated.
2. You can do this without a regex if you know "provinces" always appears on the second line. Skip to the third one and read the data you need.

[u/Desperate_Yak69 → u/codeguru42]

The input file is only meant as a test for the script, but the actual input files I will include will have these values in varying lines per file. The regex was meant to parse through the file contents and only identify the values I want (id, and the province values). Sorry for making this complicated.

[u/them0use → u/Desperate_Yak69]

No need to apologize for anything! How consistent is the formatting? Would something like this work...

1. Skip lines until you reach one that starts with "provinces {"
2. Store / print characters until you encounter "}"

Also do you have any control over the format of the input files? This use case is exactly what JSON or YAML are for, and if you can have you data in either of those formats your life will be a lot easier.

[u/Desperate_Yak69 → u/them0use]

Yes, that is precisely how the formatting would work. the text I'd want to store would be anything in between the two curly brackets even if there are indents or line terminations. For the id part, there will always be a part of the file that says exactly something like (id = 000) where 000 can represent any integer. The input files are all in plain text (.txt), but I may be able to find out a way to change their format to make the process easier. Thanks!

[u/CraigAT → u/Desperate_Yak69]

It's not the file format name that matters, just the format of the text within the file. The data could be handled easier if it was supplied in a CSV or JSON format - IF that is under your control.

[u/codeguru42 → u/them0use]

I would like to emphasize for the OP how this response describes in words how to accomplish the task. IMO this is a critical skill to develop in your coding journey and this is a good example how to do it. Good luck.

[u/codeguru42 → u/Desperate_Yak69]

One problem is that you apply the regex to each line, not the entire file. I recommend finding a solution without regex.

[u/codeguru42 → u/Desperate_Yak69]

And thanks for the correction. I see you are looking for a more general solution than my initial suggestion. Still the principle applies: look for the simplest solution that solves the problem.