how to read text from multiple files in python

Question

I have many text files around 3000 files in a folder and in each file the 193rd line is the only line which has important information. How can i read all these files into 1 single text file using python.

Answer 1

There is a function named list dir in the os module. this function returns a list of all files in a given directory. Then you can access each file using a for a loop. This tutorial will be helpful for listdir function. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-os-listdir-method/

The example code is below.

import os

# your file path
path = "" 

# to store the files or you can give this direct to the for loop like below
# for file in os.listdir(path)
dir_files = []
dir_files = os.listdir(path)

# to store your important text files.
# this list stores your important text line (193th line) in each file 
texts = []

for file in dir_files:
    with open(path + '\\' + file) as f:
        # this t varialble store your 192th line in each cycle
        t = f.read().split('\n')[192]
        # this file append each file into texts list
        texts.append(t)
        
# to print each important line
for text in texts:
    print(text)

Answer 2

You will need to list the directory and read each file like so:

import os

for filename in os.listdir("/path/to/folder"):
    with open(f"/path/to/folder/{filename}", "r") as f:
        desired_line = f.readlines()[193]
        ... # Do whatever you need with the line

Answer 3

You can loop through your file paths, read the text from every file and then split lines using the line seperator in your OS.

import os
file_paths = [f"/path/to/file{i}.ext" for i in range(3000)]
info = []
for p in file_paths:
    with open(p, "r") as file:
        text = file.read(p)
        line_list = text.split(os.linesep)
        info.append(line_list[192])

Answer 4

You could try that, if its what you want:

import os
important_lines = []
for textfile in os.listdir('data'):
    text_from_file = open( os.path.join('data', textfile) ).readlines()
    if len(text_from_file) >= 192:
        important_line = text_from_file[192]
        important_lines.append(important_line) 
        #list of 192th lines from files