Python read text file columnwise

Tue Jan 15 10:04:51 EST 2019

On 2019年01月11日, shibashibani at gmail.com <shibashibani at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello
>>>> I'm very new in python. I have a file in the format:
>>>> 2018年05月31日 16:00:00 28.90 81.77 4.3
>> 2018年05月31日 20:32:00 28.17 84.89 4.1
>> 2018年06月20日 04:09:00 27.36 88.01 4.8
>> 2018年06月20日 04:15:00 27.31 87.09 4.7
>> 2018年06月28日 04.07:00 27.87 84.91 5.0
>> 2018年06月29日 00.42:00 32.20 104.61 4.8
>> I would like to read this file in python column-wise. 
>> I tried this way but not working ....
> event_list = open('seismicity_R023E.txt',"r")
> info_event = read(event_list,'%s %s %f %f %f %f\n');

If it's really tabular data in fixed-width columns you can read
it that way with Python.
records = []
for line in file:
 record = []
 i = 0
 for width in (30, 8, 7, 5): # approximations
 item = line[i:i+width]
 record.append(item)
 i += width
 records.append(record)
This leaves them all strings, which in my experience is more
convenient in practice. You can convert as you go if you
want,though it won't look nice and simple any longer.
-- 
Neil Cerutti