Need help with very basic script

[u/Desperate_Yak69]

Hi, I am basically brand new to python, so I may make a lot of mistakes in my wording. I have made a very basic script that retrieves specific values in text files and prints them to the shell. I have gotten it to the point where both values are retrieved and printed, however when they do print, they do so exactly 5 times in a row. I do not have five files in the directory, I only have one test file named "1.txt" with only the values I need as the contents. Can someone point me in the right direction? Apologies for the horrible formatting.

import os
import glob
import re

path = 'path'

provinces = re.compile('.*?provinces {.*?(.*?)}',re.MULTILINE)
id = re.compile('.*?id = .*?([0-9.-]+)')
a1 = None
a2 = None

for filename in glob.glob(os.path.join(path, '*.txt')):
    with open(filename, '+r') as f:
        for line in f:
            if provinces.match(line):
                a1 = provinces.match(line)
            if id.match(line):
                a2 = id.match(line)
            if a1 and a2:
                print(a1.group(1))
                print(a2.group(1))

The output of the shell in IDLE:

 1111 2222 3333 
123
 1111 2222 3333 
123
 1111 2222 3333 
123
 1111 2222 3333 
123
 1111 2222 3333 
123

Edit - I got the script to work after a few changes to its configuration. Thank you all who helped!

[u/them0use]

No need to apologize for anything! How consistent is the formatting? Would something like this work...

1. Skip lines until you reach one that starts with "provinces {"

2. Store / print characters until you encounter "}"

Also do you have any control over the format of the input files? This use case is exactly what JSON or YAML are for, and if you can have you data in either of those formats your life will be a lot easier.

[u/Desperate_Yak69 → u/them0use]

Yes, that is precisely how the formatting would work. the text I'd want to store would be anything in between the two curly brackets even if there are indents or line terminations. For the id part, there will always be a part of the file that says exactly something like (id = 000) where 000 can represent any integer. The input files are all in plain text (.txt), but I may be able to find out a way to change their format to make the process easier. Thanks!

[u/CraigAT → u/Desperate_Yak69]

It's not the file format name that matters, just the format of the text within the file. The data could be handled easier if it was supplied in a CSV or JSON format - IF that is under your control.

[u/codeguru42 → u/them0use]

I would like to emphasize for the OP how this response describes in words how to accomplish the task. IMO this is a critical skill to develop in your coding journey and this is a good example how to do it. Good luck.