[Tutor] alphabetizing a file by lines

[orbitz]

lines = open(file).readlines()
lines.sort()
print lines


Dragonfirebane at aol.com wrote:

> Hello all,
>  
> I'm trying to write a program that alphabetizes a file by the first 
> letter on each line. I'm having some problems because as soon as the 
> program finds a letter, it looks for the next letter, ignoring 
> subsequent appearances of that letter. I can think of a couple ways to 
> fix this but none of them seem to work. The first of these would be to 
> add a special character to lines that have already been alphabetized, 
> but file.write() writes to the end of a file and i would need to write 
> the character at the current position in the file. This might be 
> circumvented by creating a file for each line that is alphabetized, 
> but that seems a bit extreme . . . The code is below. Any suggestions 
> would be appreciated. Future concerns will be alphabetizing past the 
> first letter.
>  
> ##############
> def linum():
>     global i
>     linu = open("%s%s" % (fn, ext), "r")
>     i = 0
>     for line in linu.readlines():
>         i += 1
>     linu.close()
> def alph():
>     alp = open("alphebatized%s%s" % (fn, ext), "w")
>     pal = open("prealp%s%s" % (fn, ext), "w")        ## eventually for 
> writing "\xfe" after a line that has been alphabetized
>     read = open("%s%s" % (fn, ext), "r")                ## same reason 
> for this line until read.close()
>     for line in read.read():
>         pal.write(line)
>     pal.close()
>     read.close()
>     print i
>     for do in range(i):
>         falp(alp)
>     alp.close()
> def falp(alp):
>     global a
>     read = open("prealp%s%s" % (fn, ext), "r")
>     for line in read.readlines():
>         try:
>             alpn = re.compile("%s(?!\xfe)" % alpha[a], re.IGNORECASE)
>             falpn = alpn.match(line)
>             if falpn:
>                 print line
>                 alp.write(line)
>                 a += 1
>                 break
>         except IndexError:
>             pass
> import re
> import string
> i = 0
> a = 0
> alpha = ' '.join(string.ascii_letters[:26]).split()
> fn = raw_input("Please enter name of file you wish to prioritize: ")
> ext = raw_input("Please enter extension of file you wish to prioritize: ")
> linum()
> alph()
> ################
>  
> Here is random.txt, the file being alphabetized:
>  
> K
> cx
> c
> cd
> e
> X
> y
> v
> l
> f
> w
> Q
> z
> h
> r
> i
> T
> s
> p
> d
> m
> n
> a
> o
> j
> u
> b
> G
>  
> Thanks in advance,
> Orri
>  
> Email: dragonfirebane at aol.com
> AIM: singingxduck
> Programming Python for the fun of it. 
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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