Search in a TXT file containing tab-separated values in Python

Question

I have a TXT file which consists of tab-separated values of the following form (3 columns):

type        color  name
fruit       red    apple
fruit       red    grape
vegetable   green  cucumber

I'm looking for a way to read that file and perform a "select" in that data set as I would be selecting in an SQL table (something like this)

SELECT name FROM data_set WHERE color='red' and type='fruit'

I understand that the file should be read and iterated through like so:

f = open('file_name.txt', 'r')
for line in f:

However I'm not sure of what would be the most efficient way of the lookup part which would return the value of the third column given the first two.

I'm using Python 2.7. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Here is a way how you can do something like it. It is not exactly what you want, but it works:

data = {}

with open('file_name.txt', 'r') as f:
    lines = [line.rstrip() for line in f]
    lines.pop(0)

for line in lines:
    x = line.split('	')
    try:
        data[x[0]][x[1]].append(x[2])
    except KeyError:
        data.update({x[0]: {x[1]: []}})
        data[x[0]][x[1]].append(x[2])

print(data['fruit']['red'])
-> ['apple', 'grape']

print(data['vegetable']['green'])
-> ['cucumber']