Handle table data in python

Question

I want to collect data and represent it as given below, but not sure what data type to use, in case of c an multi dimension array will do the job.

 Box 1 Box 2 Box 3 
Red 5 8 3
Yellow 3 7 2 
Blue 5 4 9 

The number of box and the colours are not predefined. I create this by reading file box1, box2 .....

• bereal: Not sure if I understand. Do you want a data structure to represent a table with markup in the cells? How do you derive the markup from the data?
• Heisenberg: can you share your code?

Answer 1

You can use dictionary {color : list of box count}.

e.g.

>>> colors = {}
>>> colors["red"] = [1,2,3] #you can dynamically add to list while reading files.
>>> colors["yellow"] = [0,2,4]
>>> colors 
{'yellow': [0, 2, 4], 'red': [1, 2, 3]}

then you can iterate over the dictionary and print data as you want.

• Michael Kazarian: It good solution if order of colours is not important. Instead need other solution.
• Suman: Good solution but, the number of object in each file are not aware till i pars through the file. so i can not get do "colors["yellow"] = [0,2,4]" only after reading all files i get this information. I want to save the information just after parsing the each file.

Answer 2

@Heisenberg suggest solution with unsorted dict. But if need order of added items you can use next solution:

from collections import OrderedDict
class Colors(OrderedDict):
 """Store colors in depend from added order"""
 def __setitem__(self, color, value):
 if color in self:
 del self[color]
 OrderedDict.__setitem__(self, color, value)
colors_table = Colors()
colors_table["red"] = [1,2,3]
colors_table["yellow"] = [0,2,4]
colors_table["blue"] = [2,3,4]
print colors_table # print Colors([('red', [1, 2, 3]), ('yellow', [0, 2, 4]), ('blue', [2, 3, 4])])

• Suman: The problem is that i do not have full information at once, I need to read the data from different files box1.txt, box2.txt & box3.txt. When i read the first file i create the dict and create the entire inforamtion, when i read second file how can i update this information ?

Answer 3

You can use multi-dimensional array in python as well, but in a slightly different manner. Here it will be an array of arrays. So your data structure will look something like:

matrix = [
 ['Color', 'Box1', 'Box2', 'Box3'],
 ['Red', 5, 8, 3],
 ['Yellow', 3, 7, 2],
 ['Blue', 5, 4, 9]
]