Homework 9: File I/O

Due: Monday, October 28

Write two functions:

1. The first function, list_output(), should write each element of a list to a separate line of a file. Each item should be prefixed by its index. For example:

items = ['alpha', 'beta', 'gamma']
list_output("letters.txt", items)

should create the following file:

0 alpha
1 beta
2 gamma

Note – list_output() takes two parameters – a string, which is the name of the output file, and the list. list_output() should not return anything! It simply creates a file.

1. The second function, list_input(), should read in a file in the above format and reconstruct the original list. So, list_input() should take in a single string as a parameter, the name of the input file. list_input() should return a single list.

NOTE: Please consider the following:

• It is possible that the list for list_input() has more than 10 entries, so that you cannot assume the “data” of the list starts in position 2 when reading in the data file
• It is also possible that entries in the list themselves have spaces – you’ll need to find the first occurrance of a space in each line when parsing the file in list_input()