christophergregory

people = {} # let's start with an empty dictionary to hold our data

with open('numbers.txt', 'r') as numbers:
    for index, line in enumerate(numbers):
        if index > 0: # skip the first line (don't need the headers)
            name, birthday = line.rstrip().split(',') 

            # study this line carefully, it's intentionally terse
            people.update({ name : { 'number' : birthday } })

christophergregory

import csv

# Open all required files with at once
with open('numbers.txt',   'r') as numbersfile, \
     open('birthdays.txt', 'r') as birthdayfile, \
     open('output.txt',    'w') as output:
    
    # Read in each line as a dictionary
    # https://docs.python.org/2/library/csv.html#csv.DictReader
    numReader  = csv.DictReader(numbersfile, fieldnames=['Name','Number'])