Python file parsing: Build tree from text file

I have an indented text file that will be used to build a tree. Each line represents a node, and indents represent depth as well as node the current node is a child of.

For example, a file might look like

ROOT
   Node1
      Node2
         Node3
            Node4
   Node5
   Node6

Which indicates that ROOT contains three children: 1, 5, and 6, Node1 has one child: 2, and Node2 has one child: 3, etc.

I have come up with a recursive algorithm and have programmed it and it works, but it’s kind of ugly and especially treats the example above very crudely (when going from node 4 to node 5)

It uses “indent count” as the basis for recursion, so if the number of indents = current depth + 1, I would go one level deeper. But this means when I read a line with less indents, I have to come back up one level at a time, checking the depth each time.

Here is what I have

def _recurse_tree(node, parent, depth):
    tabs = 0
    
    while node:
        tabs = node.count("t")
        if tabs == depth:
            print "%s: %s" %(parent.strip(), node.strip())
        elif tabs == depth + 1:
            node = _recurse_tree(node, prev, depth+1)
            tabs = node.count("t")
            
            #check if we have to surface some more
            if tabs == depth:
                print "%s: %s" %(parent.strip(), node.strip())
            else:
                return node
        else:
            return node
        
        prev = node
        node = inFile.readline().rstrip()
        
inFile = open("test.txt")
root = inFile.readline().rstrip()
node = inFile.readline().rstrip()
_recurse_tree(node, root, 1)

Right now I am just printing out the nodes to verify that the parent node is correct for each line, but maybe there is a cleaner way to do it? Especially the case in the elif block when I’m coming back from each recursion call.

Answer

The big issue is the “lookahead” that I think caused the ugliness in question. It can be shortened slightly:

def _recurse_tree(parent, depth, source):
    last_line = source.readline().rstrip()
    while last_line:
        tabs = last_line.count('t')
        if tabs < depth:
            break
        node = last_line.strip()
        if tabs >= depth:
            if parent is not None:
                print "%s: %s" %(parent, node)
            last_line = _recurse_tree(node, tabs+1, source)
    return last_line

inFile = open("test.txt")
_recurse_tree(None, 0, inFile)

Since we’re talking recursion, I took pains to avoid any global variables (source and last_line). It would be more pythonic to make them members on some parser object.