parse_gdp_example.py

#!/usr/bin/env python2
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Created on Thu Jun 29 11:26:56 2017

@author: saliksyed
"""

gdp_data = open("gdp.dat").readlines()

gdp_by_country = {}
for line in gdp_data:
    data = line.rstrip().split(",")

    country = data[0]
    country_code = data[1]
    gdp_values = []
    for value in data[5:]:
        # Remove the extra quotes in the data files
        without_quotes = value[1:-1] 
        # We need to do this because there is some missing data which is represented by ""
        if without_quotes == "":
            final_parsed_value = None
        else:
            final_parsed_value = float(without_quotes)

        gdp_values.append(final_parsed_value)
    
    country_data = {}
    
    country_data["country"] = country
    country_data["country_code"] = country_code
    country_data["gdp_values"] = gdp_values
    gdp_by_country[country] = country_data
    
print gdp_by_country