I am new at programming and I have written a script to extract text from a vcf file. I am using a Linux virtual machine and running Ubuntu. I have run this script through the command line by changing my directory to the file with the vcf file in and then entering python script.py
.
My script knows which file to process because the beginning of my script is:
my_file = open("inputfile1.vcf", "r+")
outputfile = open("outputfile.txt", "w")
The script puts the information I need into a list and then I write it to outputfile. However, I have many input files (all .vcf
) and want to write them to different output files with a similar name to the input (such as input_processed.txt
).
Do I need to run a shell script to iterate over the files in the folder? If so how would I change the python script to accommodate this? I.e writing the list to an outputfile?
I would integrate it within the Python script, which will allow you to easily run it on other platforms too and doesn't add much code anyway.
import glob
import os
# Find all files ending in 'vcf'
for vcf_filename in glob.glob('*.vcf'):
vcf_file = open(vcf_filename, 'r+')
# Similar name with a different extension
output_filename = os.path.splitext(vcf_filename)[0] + '.txt'
outputfile = open(output_filename, 'w')
# Process the data
...
To output the resulting files in a separate directory I would:
import glob
import os
output_dir = 'processed'
os.makedirs(output_dir, exist_ok=True)
# Find all files ending in 'vcf'
for vcf_filename in glob.glob('*.vcf'):
vcf_file = open(vcf_filename, 'r+')
# Similar name with a different extension
output_filename = os.path.splitext(vcf_filename)[0] + '.txt'
outputfile = open(os.path.join(output_dir, output_filename), 'w')
# Process the data
...
You don't need write shell script,
maybe this question will help you?
How to list all files of a directory?
It depends on how you implement the iteration logic.
If you want to implement it in python, just do it;
If you want to implement it in a shell script, just change your python script to accept parameters, and then use shell script to call the python script with your suitable parameters.
I have a script I frequently use which includes using PyQt5 to pop up a window that prompts the user to select a file... then it walks the directory to find all of the files in the directory:
pathname = first_fname[:(first_fname.rfind('/') + 1)] #figures out the pathname by finding the last '/'
new_pathname = pathname + 'for release/' #makes a new pathname to be added to the names of new files so that they're put in another directory...but their names will be altered
file_list = [f for f in os.listdir(pathname) if f.lower().endswith('.xls') and not 'map' in f.lower() and not 'check' in f.lower()] #makes a list of the files in the directory that end in .xls and don't have key words in the names that would indicate they're not the kind of file I want
You need to import os to use the os.listdir command.
You can use listdir(you need to write condition to filter the particular extension) or glob. I generally prefer glob. For example
import os
import glob
for file in glob.glob('*.py'):
data = open(file, 'r+')
output_name = os.path.splitext(file)[0]
output = open(output_name+'.txt', 'w')
output.write(data.read())
This code will read the content from input and store it in outputfile.