Python Forum

Im relatively new to python and I have a file containing words/lines like this:


AA EY2 EY1
AAA T R IH2 P AH0 L EY1
AABERG AA1 B ER0 G
AACHEN AA1 K AH0 N
AACHENER AA1 K AH0 N ER0
AAH AA1
AAKER AA1 K ER0
AALIYAH AA2 L IY1 AA2
AALSETH AA1 L S EH0 TH
AAMODT AA1 M AH0 T
AANCOR AA1 N K AO2 R

what i need to do read these into a dictionary with the key being the first word/entry of each line, and that is mapped to a list containing each string. for example- AA: "EY2", "EY1"
that way i can search for two words (indexes of the dictionary) and compare their lists. I've got a basic loop to read the file line by line stripping the newline character but not sure how to precede.

 
    d= {}
    with open(fName) as f:
        while True:
            line = f.readline()
            if not line.startswith(";;;"):
                break
        for line in f:
            print(line, end="")

i feel its important to recognize that after each of the first words in every line theres a double space. not just a single space. which has me a little tripped up since my first instinct was to use .split

Eliminate everything under the while True (what is this supposed to do). Print anything in the code below that you do not understand.

d= {}
with open(fName) as f:
    for line in f:
        print(line, end="")
        line_as_list=line.strip().split()
        this_key=line_as_list[0]  ## easier to understand this way??
        d[this_key]=[]
        for item in line_as_list[1:]  ## skip key/first item
            d[this_key].append(item) 

that first part is because theres a comment in the beginning of the file and that works around it.

Then "for line in f" will read the next record, skipping over the while True record, no matter what the while True record contains. Just add a test

d= {}
with open(fName) as f:
    for line in f:
        print(line, end="")
        if not line.strip().startswith(";"):
            line_as_list=line.strip().split()
            this_key=line_as_list[0]  ## easier to understand this way??
            d[this_key]=[]
            for item in line_as_list[1:]  ## skip key/first item
                d[this_key].append(item)