How to reformat a text file data formatting in python (reading a csv/txt with multiple delimiters and rows)

Question

Coding noob here with a question. I have a text file that has the following format:

img1.jpg 468,3,489,16,5 510,37,533,51,2 411,3,433,17,5....

img2.jpg 255,397,267,417,2.... . . .

The data is a series of images with information on co-ordinates where there are 5 variables separated by commas, and then a new set of co-ordinates is separated by a space. There are about 500 files and for each file there are variable numbers of co-ordinate groups. I'm wanting to convert this text file into the following kind of format:

File name	Co-ord 1	Co-ord 2	Co-ord 3	Co-ord 4	Co-ord 5
img1.jpg	468	3	489	16	5
img1.jpg	510	37	533	51	2
img1.jpg	411	3	433	17	5
img2.jpg	255	397	267	417	2

How can I do this in python?

Answer 1

Since each image name and group of co-ordinates are separated by spaces, we can use split() to split it info array and it's basically what your expected output.
Here i wrote an example that split your input into a list of lists, each inner list represent one line in your example output with the first element describe which image the co-ordinates belong to:

test = "img1.jpg 468,3,489,16,5 510,37,533,51,2 411,3,433,17,5"
str_list = test.split()
res = list()
recent_img = ''
for item in str_list:
    if item.endswith("jpg"):
        # find a new image name
        recent_img = item
        continue
    co_ordinates_list = item.split(",")
    if len(co_ordinates_list) == 5:
        co_ordinates_list.insert(0, recent_img)
        res.append(co_ordinates_list)