The DataFrame is a 2D array, but it can have multiple row and column indices, which pandas calls MultiIndex, that essentially allows it to store multi-dimensional data. It is an abstraction on top of Numpy which provides multi-dimensional arrays, similar to Matlab. It is a Python package that provides the DataFrame class and other functions to do insanely powerful data analysis with minimal effort. If you a Python data analyst then you are most likely familiar with pandas. For further data analysis, I highly recommend reading the data into a pandas DataFrame. If the program that you want to feed the data into expects a CSV format, then that’s your end product. Well, this depends entirely on how you plan on using the data. Once you understand the input data, the next step is to determine what would be a more usable format. If not, you may have to decipher the data format for yourselves. If you are lucky, there will be documentation that describes the data format. So, the first step, when faced with any parsing problem, is to understand the input data format. With that definition in mind, we can imagine that our input may be in any format. Parse Convert data in a certain format into a more usable format. I don’t like the above Oxford dictionary definition. So, what is parsing? Parse Analyse (a string or text) into logical syntactic components. Sometimes data is not even in a standard format which makes things a little harder. So, inevitably there is a need to convert data from one format to another for consumption by different programs. An individual program can only be expected to cater for a selection of these data formats. Some data formats are better suited to different applications. However, we live in a world where there is a wide variety of data formats. Why do we even need to parse files? In an imaginary world where all data existed in the same format, one could expect all programs to input and output that data. Parsing text in complex format using regular expressionsįirst, let us understand what the problem is.
Python text extractor separate phone from fax code#
All of the code and the sample text that I use is available in my Github repo here.
What do I mean by complex? Well, we will get to that, young padawan.įor reference, the slide deck that I use to present on this topic is available here. I will briefly touch on parsing files in standard formats, but what I want to focus on is the parsing of complex text files. In this article, I will introduce you to my system for parsing files. This article is aimed at Python beginners who are interested in learning to parse text files. That is why I recommend that beginners get comfortable with parsing files early on in their programming education.
However, once you become comfortable with parsing files, you never have to worry about that part of the problem. Parsing is not easy, and it can be a stumbling block for beginners. I hate parsing files, but it is something that I have had to do at the start of nearly every project.
0 kommentar(er)
