Parsing a file with hierarchical structure in Python

Posted by Kevin Stargel on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Kevin Stargel
Published on 2010-03-31T16:03:11Z Indexed on 2010/03/31 16:23 UTC
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Filed under:

python

|

file-io

|

data-structures

I'm trying to parse the output from a tool into a data structure but I'm having some difficulty getting things right. The file looks like this:

 Fruits
   Apple
     Auxiliary
     Core
     Extras
   Banana
     Something
   Coconut
 Vegetables
   Eggplant
   Rutabaga

You can see that top-level items are indented by one space, and items beneath that are indented by two spaces for each level. The items are also in alphabetical order.

How do I turn the file into a Python list that's something like ["Fruits", "Fruits/Apple", "Fruits/Banana", ..., "Vegetables", "Vegetables/Eggplant", "Vegetables/Rutabaga"]?

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