How to convert the : char into a newline in a file by python

Question

I am having a text file in which data is in this form:

Before formatting:

a1 ,a2,a3:b1 ,b2,b3:c1 ,c2,c3:....so on. 

Now i want to convert the data in this particular form:

After formatting:

a1,a2,a3
b1,b2,b3
c1,c2,c3
...so on

To do: first i want to convert : char in 'newline' and want to recover the space after every first character such as a1 b1 c1. the space is creating problem as the data after formatting is to be converted into csv file.

I tried transferring one by one char from one file to other in which i used an if case to replace : to 'newline'. For newline I used this \n

file.txt is file which contain a1 ,a2,a3:b1 ,b2,b3:c1 ,c2,c3:....so on

convert.txt if file in which i want formatted data

with open('file.txt','r') as rf:
    with open('convert.txt','w') as wf:
        a=1
        rf_temp = rf.read(a)
        while len(rf_temp) > 0:
            if rf_temp == ':':
                rf_temp.replace(':','\n')
            wf.write(rf_temp)
            rf_temp = rf.read(a)
    wf.close()
rf.close

the data gets copied clearly but not in format which i want including ':' this symbol. There are no issues in copying.

Answer 1

# define the input file and output file
inputFile = 'test.txt'
outFile = "test.csv"

# read data from input file
data = open(inputFile).read()

# change data to wanted format, using '\n' to replace ':'
data = "\n".join(data.split(':'))

# save the changed data to output file
outF = open(outFile, 'w')
outF.write(data)

print(data)

output

a1 ,a2,a3
b1 ,b2,b3
c1 ,c2,c3