Deleting every second occurence of a word in a txt file (Python)

Question

I would like to delete some occurrences of the word "name" in a file but not others. I am guessing the best way to do this is to use some sort of accumulator pattern but I am not sure how to implement it.

So far I have:

f = open("old_text.txt")
number = f.read()
f.close

name_occurrence = (number.count("Courtney"))

I am just using 'Courtney' as an example of an actual name in the file. I would like to somehow delete every odd occurrence of the word "Courtney" but not the even ones i.e. as number.count iterates it assigns each instance of "Courtney" a number value and then some code deletes occurrences of the word "Courtney" that have a value of 1,3,5,7...

Thanks for your help,

Fluffy

Answer 1

Not tested, but you could try a regex like this:

import re

with open("old_text.txt") as f:
   txt = f.read()
   new_txt=re.sub(r'(\bCourtney\b.*?)(\s*\Courtney\b\s*)','\1',txt,re.S)

If you want a dynamic string (i.e., that has a variable in it):

import re

name='Courtney'

with open("old_text.txt") as f:
   txt = f.read()
   new_txt=re.sub(r'(\b{}\b.*?)(\s*\{}\b\s*)'.format(name,name),'\1',txt,re.S)

Answer 2

This is ugly, but it works and it's pure python

file names.txt (I've put numbers in front of name Courtney to be easier to fallow which ones are deleted):

11111 Courtney Emma Jessica 22222 Courtney Ashley Amanda Jennifer 
Sarah Michael 33333 Courtney Christopher Matthew Joshua David
Emma Jessica Ashley Amanda Jennifer 44444 Courtney 
Sarah 55555 Courtney Michael 66666 Courtney Christopher 
77777 Courtney Emma Jessica Ashley Amanda Jennifer 88888 Courtney 
Sarah Michael 99999 Courtney Christopher Matthew

code:

f = open("names.txt",'r')
splited_lines = []
name_occurrence = 0
name = "Courtney"

#create list of lines where line is list of words
index = 1
for line in f:
    name_occurrence += line.count(name)
    splited_line = line.split()
    splited_lines.append(splited_line)
f.close

#delete every even name (Courtney)
#if you want every odd to be deleted set word_counter on 0
word_counter = -1    
for i,line in enumerate(splited_lines):
    for j,word in enumerate(line):
        if (name in word):
            word_counter += 1 
            if (word_counter%2 == 0):
                splited_lines[i][j] = word.replace(name, "")

#create string to write back to file
text_to_save = ""
for line in splited_lines:
    for word in line:
        if word != "":
            text_to_save += word + " "
    text_to_save += "\n"

#write to file
with open('names.txt', 'w') as f:
    f.writelines(text_to_save)

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask if you don't understand something.