trouble with regular expressions

I need to find a string inside of a file; I copied and pasted the exact string from the file into the pattern spot, but I still can't find it. The print commands return empty strings, except for the first name. Here is my code:

def fillWindow(self,student):
    global fileDirectory
    location = path.join(fileDirectory, student + '.txt')
    file = open(location, 'r')

    # find item in list and then place it in the text box   
    firstName = re.findall(r'firstName\:', file.read())
    print(firstName)
    self.firstNameBox.insert(0,'firstName')

    lastName = re.findall(r'lastName\:', file.read())
    print(lastName)
    self.lastNameBox.insert(0,'lastNam开发者_运维问答e')

    family = re.findall(r'family\:', file.read())
    print(family)
    self.familyNameBox.insert(0,'family')

    file.close()

And here are the contents of the file:

firstName: test
lastName: one
family: family

I think file.read() will move the cursor so subsequent calls will attempt to read from the end of the file.

You could read the contents of the file into a variable first, and then perform the regex searches in that.

Your better bet would be to read the lines of the file in using readlines() or xreadlines(). Something like this:

input = open('input')

for line in input.xreadlines():
  if line.startswith('firstName'):
    firstname = line.split()[1]
  elif line.startswith('lastName'):
    lastname = line.split()[1]
  elif line.startswith('family'):
    family = line.split()[1]

input.close()

print firstname
print lastname
print family

Also, if you want to use a regular expression for this, you'll want to use something like:

import re
line = "family: blah"
m = re.search("family: (.*)", line)
if m != None:
  print m.group(1)

Mamma mia ! So much complications !

def fillWindow(student):
    global fileDirectory
    location = path.join(fileDirectory, student + '.txt')

    pat = re.compile('firstName: (.*)\r?\n'
                     'lastName: (.*)\r?\n'
                     'family: (.*)')

    with open(location, 'r') as f:
        ch = f.read()

        firstName,lastName,family = pat.search(ch).groups()
        # or li = pat.findall(ch) if there are several

        print(firstName)
        self.firstNameBox.insert(0,'firstName')
        print(lastName)
        self.lastNameBox.insert(0,'lastName')
        print(family)
        self.familyNameBox.insert(0,'family')

By the way, what is the purpose of the instruction global fileDirectory ??

I suppose there are several sections like

firstName: test
lastName: one 
family: family

so why not use a csv.reader() or csv.DictReader() ?

If you can make the file format a tad bit more flexible, you can use the built in Config Parser module (ConfigParser in 2.X, configparser in 3.x)

For the file:

[default]
firstName: test
lastName: one
family: family

The following code would work fine:

import ConfigParser

def fillWindow(self,student):
    global fileDirectory
    location = path.join(fileDirectory, student + '.txt')
    parser = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
    parser.read(location)
    firstName = parser.get('default','firstName')
    lastName = parser.get('default','lastName')
    family = parser.get('default','family')

EDIT Alternately, your original file could be parsed with csv as pointed out by eyquem:

import csv

def fillWindow(self,student):
    global fileDirectory
    location = path.join(fileDirectory, student + '.txt')
    reader = csv.reader(open(location),delimiter=':')
    dict = {}
    for row in reader:
        dict[row[0]] = row[1]