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pythonstringfile-iofloating-pointreadlines

Importing a text file gives error

I have a text file that has the following data:

5298    10036   4   360 8
6128    11947   2   385 7
9472    18930   0   233 4
5056    9790    1   293 6

I read this file using the following code:

file1 = open("test.txt","r")
lines = file1.readlines()       
BF=[map(float, line.split()) for line in lines]

This gives me the following error:

could not convert string to float: ÿþ5

Why do I see this error?

Update:

print lines

shows:

['\xff\xfe5\x002\x009\x008\x00\t\x001\x000\x000\x003\x006\x00\t\x004\x00\t\x003\x006\x000\x00\t\x008\x00\r\x00\n', '\x006\x001\x002\x008\x00\t\x001\x001\x009\x004\x007\x00\t\x002\x00\t\x003\x008\x005\x00\t\x007\x00\r\x00\n', '\x009\x004\x007\x002\x00\t\x001\x008\x009\x003\x000\x00\t\x000\x00\t\x002\x003\x003\x00\t\x004\x00\r\x00\n', '\x005\x000\x005\x006\x00\t\x009\x007\x009\x000\x00\t\x001\x00\t\x002\x009\x003\x00\t\x006\x00\r\x00\n', '\x001\x005\x000\x006\x004\x00\t\x003\x000\x001\x006\x000\x00\t\x001\x00\t\x003\x001\x002\x00\t\x008\x00']
Solution

  • You have a utf-16 BOM, this is 0xFE 0xFF which is interpreted as ÿþ, you need to open the file and pass the encoding.

    file1 = open("test.txt","r", encoding = "utf-16")

    As you using python 2 you could try this:

    import io
file1 = io.open("test.txt","r", encoding = "utf-16")