Adding a Line Break?

Python Help
1

Hello. I’m wondering if anyone could help me. I’ve tried \n and os.linsep and I cannot get a line break working. I’m brand new to Python and havent coded since Visual Basic 6 back in the 90s.

I’m trying to output “IconStatement” with line breaks?

import os
import xarray as xr
from glob import glob

num_of_files = 3

glmFiles = glob(f'OR_GLM-L2-LCFA_G16_*.nc')
print(glmFiles)
flash_data = []

updateTime = None
for i in range(num_of_files):
    if i < len(glmFiles):

        ds = xr.open_dataset(glmFiles[-i])

        if updateTime == None or updateTime <= ds.product_time.data:
            updateTime = ds.product_time.data

        for lat, lon in zip(ds.flash_lat.data, ds.flash_lon.data):
            lon = float(lon)
            lat = float(lat)
            
            IconStatement = "Icon: " + str(lat) + ", " + str(lon) + ", 1, 1, 16, 16" + os.linesep
            
            flash_data.append((IconStatement))

with open(f'glm_strikes.txt', 'w') as f:
    data = (flash_data)
    f.write(str(data))


with open(f'glm_update.txt', 'w') as f:
    f.write(str(updateTime))
2

You have a list of strings that you want to print on there own line right?
But you did not loop over the lines to handle them.

      data = (flash_data)

Note: the () does not change anything, its the same as:

    data = flash_data

You likely want something like this:

with open('glm_strikes.txt', 'w') as f:
    for line in flash_data:
        f.write(line)

You use the f'...' string prefix, but not where you need to subsitute values.
The place when an f-string would be useful is for this:

IconStatement = f"Icon: {lat}, {lon}, 1, 1, 16, 16\n"

Note: Use of os.linesep is not needed. Python’s text mode files will translate line ending from \n to whatever the OS expects.

1 Like
3

Thank you very much for your help! I understand my issue now. Have a good day!

6

Perfect! That code worked and I now have a better understanding of what I was doing wrong and learned something new. Thank you very much and have a great day.

7

Just to add, you can also use writelines in place of a manual loop over the lines with write calls:

with open('glm_strikes.txt', 'w') as f:
    f.writelines(flash_data)

If the lines in flash_data don’t already have line separators added, you can add them while writing to the file by using print instead of write:

with open('glm_strikes.txt', 'w') as f:
    for line in flash_data:
        print(line, file=f)

If later on you find yourself using pathlib, you can avoid managing the open context-manager yourself by using Path.write_text:

glm_file = Path("glm_strikes.txt")

glm_file.write_text("\n".join(flash_data)) # add separators
glm_file.write_text("".join(flash_data))   # don't add separators
1 Like
8

Downside is the last line does not have a line separator.

9

Oh, very nice! Thank you for your help. I rewrote some of my coding with your suggestions and added other things I needed and it’s working great.

My code is pulling lightning data from GOES satellite and making it available for free, for the public’s use, using expensive GR2Analyst & WSV3 software. High end weather software. So I really thank you and so do about 170 unique ips (users) of my data. Thank you!