Python read text file columnwise

[Neil Cerutti]

On 2019-01-11, shibashibani at gmail.com <shibashibani at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello
>> 
>> I'm very new in python. I have a file in the format:
>> 
>> 2018-05-31   16:00:00        28.90   81.77   4.3
>> 2018-05-31   20:32:00        28.17   84.89   4.1
>> 2018-06-20   04:09:00        27.36   88.01   4.8
>> 2018-06-20   04:15:00        27.31   87.09   4.7
>> 2018-06-28   04.07:00        27.87   84.91   5.0
>> 2018-06-29   00.42:00        32.20   104.61  4.8
>
> I would like to read this file in python column-wise.  
>
> I tried this way but not working ....
>   event_list = open('seismicity_R023E.txt',"r")
>     info_event = read(event_list,'%s %s %f %f %f %f\n');

If it's really tabular data in fixed-width columns you can read
it that way with Python.

records = []
for line in file:
    record = []
    i = 0
    for width in (30, 8, 7, 5): # approximations
        item = line[i:i+width]
        record.append(item)
        i += width
    records.append(record)

This leaves them all strings, which in my experience is more
convenient in practice. You can convert as you go if you
want,though it won't look nice and simple any longer.

-- 
Neil Cerutti