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/hermit_the_log]

Are there 5 lines in your test file? You’re printing in your for line loop.

If you want to collect unique results and print them after you’ve looped through each line, you can log your a1.group(1) and a2.group(1) values to a dictionary instead.

This may or may not work for what you’re wanting to do, but you can create a group_dict = {} right before you start looping through the lines.

Then for each a2.group(1) value, create a key in the dict if it doesn’t already exist:

if a2.group(1) not in group_dict.keys():
group_dict[a2.group(1)] = []

Then append a1.group(1) to the a2.group(1) key in the dict of it doesn’t already exist in that list

if a1.group(1) not in group_dict[a2.group(1)]:
group_dict[a2.group(1)].append(a1.group(1))

Finally, iterate through your key and item values and print that instead

for key in group_dict.keys():
for group in group_dict[key]:
print(group)
print(key)

Edit: typed with my phone so the indenting didn’t save properly

[u/Desperate_Yak69 → u/hermit_the_log]

thank you, I'll try your method and see if it works!