I want to replace single quotes with double quotes in a list

Question

So I am making a program that takes a text file, breaks it into words, then writes the list to a new text file.

The issue I am having is I need the strings in the list to be with double quotes not single quotes.

For example

I get this ['dog','cat','fish'] when I want this ["dog","cat","fish"]

Here is my code

with open('input.txt') as f:     file = f.readlines() nonewline = [] for x in file:     nonewline.append(x[:-1]) words = [] for x in nonewline:     words = words + x.split() textfile = open('output.txt','w') textfile.write(str(words)) 

I am new to python and haven't found anything about this. Anyone know how to solve this?

[Edit: I forgot to mention that i was using the output in an arduino project that required the list to have double quotes.]

Answer 1

You cannot change how str works for list.

How about using JSON format which use " for strings.

>>> animals = ['dog','cat','fish'] >>> print(str(animals)) ['dog', 'cat', 'fish']  >>> import json >>> print(json.dumps(animals)) ["dog", "cat", "fish"] 

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import json  ...  textfile.write(json.dumps(words)) 

Answer 2

Most likely you'll want to just replace the single quotes with double quotes in your output by replacing them:

str(words).replace("'", '"') 

You could also extend Python's str type and wrap your strings with the new type changing the __repr__() method to use double quotes instead of single. It's better to be simpler and more explicit with the code above, though.

class str2(str):     def __repr__(self):         # Allow str.__repr__() to do the hard work, then         # remove the outer two characters, single quotes,         # and replace them with double quotes.         return ''.join(('"', super().__repr__()[1:-1], '"'))  >>> "apple" 'apple' >>> class str2(str): ...     def __repr__(self): ...         return ''.join(('"', super().__repr__()[1:-1], '"')) ... >>> str2("apple") "apple" >>> str2('apple') "apple"