Replace String with increasing numer [SOLVED]

[AlphaInc]

Hello everybody,

I have a text-file with multiple strings which I want to be replaced by an increasing number.
For example there is there the string "example" 7 times in it and I want to replace "example" with a number:

Before:
This example is an example on how to make an example with the word example. the example ends here with an example. for example.

After
This 1 is an 2 on how to make an 3 with the word 4. the 5 ends here with an 6. for 7.

How do you do that?
Also, while developing the script, I want it to look for every text-file inside my folder not just a specified file (see code below).

This is what I have now but it doens't work:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

fileCounter = 1

with open('*.txt', 'r') as file :
  filedata = file.read()

filedata = filedata.replace('example', ''+fileCounter)

with open('*.txt', 'w') as file:
  file.write(filedata)

[bowlofred]

If it's not too huge, I'd just loop over it. But for very large files, that's inefficient.

paragraph = """This example is an example on how to make an
example with the word example. the example ends here with an example. for example"""

target = "example"
counter = 0
while target in paragraph:
    counter += 1
    paragraph = paragraph.replace(target, str(counter), 1)

print(paragraph)

If it is huge, time to break out regex parser. I think there should be a simpler way to write a callable incrementor, but this will do for now.

import re

target = "example"

def str_counter(match_object):
    str_counter.count += 1
    return str(str_counter.count)
str_counter.count = 0

paragraph = """This example is an example on how to make an
example with the word example. the example ends here with an example. for example"""

paragraph = re.sub(re.escape(target), str_counter, paragraph)

print(paragraph)

[AlphaInc]

If it's not too huge, I'd just loop over it. But for very large files, that's inefficient.

paragraph = """This example is an example on how to make an
example with the word example. the example ends here with an example. for example"""

target = "example"
counter = 0
while target in paragraph:
    counter += 1
    paragraph = paragraph.replace(target, str(counter), 1)

print(paragraph)

If it is huge, time to break out regex parser. I think there should be a simpler way to write a callable incrementor, but this will do for now.

import re

target = "example"

def str_counter(match_object):
    str_counter.count += 1
    return str(str_counter.count)
str_counter.count = 0

paragraph = """This example is an example on how to make an
example with the word example. the example ends here with an example. for example"""

paragraph = re.sub(re.escape(target), str_counter, paragraph)

print(paragraph)

Hey, thanks for replying.
Where do I have to define that my script should check in text-files? And what's the difference between target and paragraph?

[Axel_Erfurt]

maybe like this?

mytext = """hello example
example test
world example
example to learn
best example
example new
better example"""

result = ""

filedata = mytext.splitlines()

i = 1
for line in filedata: 
    if 'example' in line:
        line = line.replace("example", f"example_{str(i)}")
        i += 1
    result += f"{line}\n"

print(result)

Output:
hello example_1
example_2 test
world example_3
example_4 to learn
best example_5
example_6 new
better example_7

[bowlofred]

Where do I have to define that my script should check in text-files?

In my example, the text is already in a string called paragraph. In your example, you read in the text file to a variable called filedata. They're both just strings. Rename them how you want.

And what's the difference between target and paragraph?

One is what you're looking to replace, one is where you're looking and replacing it. Did you try running the code?

[AlphaInc]

Where do I have to define that my script should check in text-files?

In my example, the text is already in a string called paragraph. In your example, you read in the text file to a variable called filedata. They're both just strings. Rename them how you want.

And what's the difference between target and paragraph?

One is what you're looking to replace, one is where you're looking and replacing it. Did you try running the code?

Yeah I did but it did not change my text-file. I changed it a little bit to this.

import re

target = "example"

def str_counter(match_object):
    str_counter.count += 1
    return str(str_counter.count)
str_counter.count = 0

with open('text.txt', 'r') as file :
  filedata = file.read()

filedata = re.sub(re.escape(target), str_counter, filedata)

print(filedata)

This works fine except for one last thing - how can I save the printed output to the same file and overwrite it?

[Yoriz]

paragraph = (
    "This example is an example on how to make an example with the"
    " word example. the example ends here with an example. for example"
)

target = "example"


def replace_occurence_count(paragraph: str, target: str) -> str:
    occurances = paragraph.count(target)
    for number in range(1, occurances + 1):
        paragraph = paragraph.replace(target, f"{number}", 1)
    return paragraph


print(replace_occurence_count(paragraph, target))

Output:
This 1 is an 2 on how to make an 3 with the word 4. the 5 ends here with an 6. for 7

---

@bowlofred
For a simple counter, you can use itertools count

from itertools import count

counter = count(1)
print(next(counter))
print(next(counter))

Output:
1
2

[bowlofred]

@bowlofred
For a simple counter, you can use itertools count

Yes. But for re.sub(), I needed a callable that returns the answer, not an iterator. I imagine there is something in functools that will create such a function for me, but I hadn't yet found such a solution.

[bowlofred]

This works fine except for one last thing - how can I save the printed output to the same file and overwrite it?

In your code you read the data from the file into a variable with <file>.read(). You can do the opposite (on a file that has been opened for writing) with <file>.write().

# read in filedata
with open('text.txt', 'r') as file :
    filedata = file.read()

# do stuff with filedata here

# write filedata out here (overwriting the file)
with open('text.txt', 'w') as file:
    file.write(filedata)

This is a bit dangerous because for a period of time, there is no data on disk. For a production script, I'd change this to write the file to another name, then after the write has succeeded, rename the file.

[Yoriz]

Yes. But for re.sub(), I needed a callable that returns the answer, not an iterator. I imagine there is something in functools that will create such a function for me, but I hadn't yet found such a solution.

Call it with next as I did in the example above.