I am practicing my python skills by writing a Phone book program. I am able to search and add entries but I am having a lot of trouble deleting entries.
I am trying to find a line that matches my search and delete it as well as the next 4 lines. I have a function to delete here:
def delete():
del_name = raw_input("What is the first name of the person you would like to delete? ")
with open("phonebook.txt", "r+") as f:
deletelines = f.readlines()
for i, line in enumerate(deletelines):
if del_name in line:
for l in deletelines[i+1:i+4]:
f.write(l)
This does not work.
How would I delete multiple entries from a text file like this?
Answering your direct question: you can use fileinput to easily alter a text file in-place:
import fileinput
file = fileinput.input('phonebook.txt', inplace=True)
for line in file:
if word_to_find in line:
for _ in range(4): # skip this line and next 4 lines
next(file, None)
else:
print line,
In order to avoid reading the entire file into memory, this handles some things in the background for you - it moves your original file to a tempfile, writes the new file, and then deletes the tempfile.
Probably better answer: it looks like you have rolled a homemade serialization solution. Consider using a built-in library like csv, json, shelve, or even sqlite3 to persist your data in an easier-to-work-with format.
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