Strip And Split Read Lines In Python To Parse Config Files Effectively

The aim of this page📝 is to properly parse comma-separated values within a clients.txt the file of a script modifying Consul KV store with entries such as

<!-- CLIENTS.TXT -->
com_acme,dev1
...

…that end up as

<!-- RUN.PY RUNTIME -->
[["com_acme","dev1"],...]

…that is later on used to compose a URL which is the address of the key where a given value is stored in the Consul Database.

1. notes

• instead of for loop, use list comprehension
• .strip() removes " ", i.e. newline characters from the data structure
• .split(",") creates 2 items within a subarray, the name, and the environment
• use readlines() read each line of a file as a separate item

""" run.py """
with open("clients.txt", mode="rt", encoding="utf-8") as client_file:
        clients_with_env = [line.strip().split(",")
                            for line in client_file.readlines()]

2. links

• When to Use a List Comprehension in Python — Real Python