Stripping non-numbers from a file parse without nested lists?

[Lorenzo]

Maybe you can try a regex, something like

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import re
pattern = re.compile('^(\d+)/(\d+).*')
def read_data(filename):
       fh = open(filename, "r", encoding="ascii")

       for line in fh:
           if pattern.match(line):
               dip_,dir_ = pattern.match(line).groups()
               dip.append(dip_)
               dir.append(dir_)
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