Idiomatic Python TSV Parsing
June 2, 2023
Anonymous
Is there a more idiomatic way to implement this piece of python code?
```
data = dict()
with open("somefile.tsv") as f:
for line in f:
line = line.split("\t")
key, fields = line[0], line[1:]
data[key] = [float(field) for field in fields]
```
ChatGPT
The code you provided can be simplified and made more idiomatic using a combination of list comprehensions and the csv module. Here's an updated version:
pythonimport csv
data = {}
with open("somefile.tsv", newline='') as f:
reader = csv.reader(f, delimiter='\t')
data = {row[0]: list(map(float, row[1:])) for row in reader}
In this version:
- We use the
csvmodule to read the file, specifying the tab (\t) as the delimiter. - The
csv.readerobject is used to iterate over the rows in the file. - The dictionary comprehension creates a dictionary where each key is the first element of the row (
row[0]), and the corresponding value is a list comprehension that converts the remaining elements of the row (row[1:]) to floats.
This approach simplifies the code by removing the need to manually split each line and simplifies the value assignment using list comprehension within the dictionary comprehension.