could not convert string to float python

Question

Problem:

I am trying to run a program like

import os,sys
from scipy import stats
import numpy as np

f=open('data2.txt', 'r').readlines()
N=len(f)-1
for i in range(0,N):
    w=f[i].split()
    l1=w[1:8]
    l2=w[8:15]
    list1=[float(x) for x in l1]
    list2=[float(x) for x in l2]
    result=stats.ttest_ind(list1,list2)
    print result[1]

However, it is frequently returning the same error:

ValueError: could not convert string to float: id

Do you have any idea about this error?

Answer 1

Somewhere in your text file, a line has the word id in it, which can't really be converted to a number.

Your test code works because of the word id isn't present in line 2.

If you want to catch that line, try this code. I cleaned your code up a tad:

import os, sys
from scipy import stats
import numpy as np

for index, line in enumerate(open('data2.txt', 'r').readlines()):
    w = line.split(' ')
    l1 = w[1:8]
    l2 = w[8:15]

    try:
        list1 = map(float, l1)
        list2 = map(float, l2)
    except ValueError:
        print 'Line {i} is corrupt!'.format(i = index)'
        break

    result = stats.ttest_ind(list1, list2)
    print result[1]