Question

I am having trouble with this python question. I am in a beginner level class also so any solution that isn't too complex would be great so I can wrap my head around it! Thanks!
Given a text file containing the availability of food items, write a program that reads the information from the text file and outputs the available food items. The program first reads the name of the text file from the user. The program then reads the text file, stores the information into four separate lists, and outputs the available food items in the following format: name (category) -- description

Assume the text file contains the category, name, description, and availability of at least one food item, separated by a tab character ('\t').

Ex: If the input of the program is:

food.txt
and the contents of food.txt are:

Sandwiches Ham sandwich Classic ham sandwich Available
Sandwiches Chicken salad sandwich Chicken salad sandwich Not available
Sandwiches Cheeseburger Classic cheeseburger Not available
Salads Caesar salad Chunks of romaine heart lettuce dressed with lemon juice Available
Salads Asian salad Mixed greens with ginger dressing, sprinkled with sesame Not available
Beverages Water 16oz bottled water Available
Beverages Coca-Cola 16oz Coca-Cola Not available
Mexican food Chicken tacos Grilled chicken breast in freshly made tortillas Not available
Mexican food Beef tacos Ground beef in freshly made tortillas Available
Vegetarian Avocado sandwich Sliced avocado with fruity spread Not available
the output of the program is:

Ham sandwich (Sandwiches) -- Classic ham sandwich
Caesar salad (Salads) -- Chunks of romaine heart lettuce dressed with lemon juice
Water (Beverages) -- 16oz bottled water
Beef tacos (Mexican food) -- Ground beef in freshly made tortillas

Answer 1

The code:

filename = input("> ")

with open(filename, "r") as file:

   items = file.read()

   items = items.split("\n")

   for index, item in enumerate(items):

       items[index] = item.split("\t")

   for item in items:

       if item[3] == "Available":

           print(f"{item[1]} ({item[0]}) -- {item[2]}")

Explenation:

1. We make the user enter the file's path, in our case "food.txt". This does only work if the .txt file is in the same directory as our code.

2. We get the content of our .txt file with the "open" function. If we use the "open" function inside of a "with" statement we don't have to deal with closing the file after we opened it. The file will close as soon as we exit the statement. The argument "r" indicates that we only want to read the file, not do anything else with it.

3. However the variable "file" doesn't contain the contents of "food.txt", only the class object of our file (if you try "print(file)" you'll only get nonsense). We can simply get the content of the file by calling ".read()" after.

4. We can separate this long str using the ".split()" function. The split function seperates a string by another sertain string (in our case "\n", since the different items are seperated by a newline). Now "items" is a list of strings.

5. Next we go through all items in "items" and separate them by "\t", again using the ".split()" function. Enumerate makes a list of indexes and values from another list (in our case, "items").

6. Now we have a list of lists of strings. The only thing left to do is go through every item and print it if the item's third item is equal to "Available" (notice that this is case-sensative). And print out the result in the desired format.

The code works for me, please ask me if there is anything you don't understand (or if the code is incorrect). Happy to help :D