access element on a list using index

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given a line of strings

01 02 03 04 05 
06 07 08 09 10 
.. .. .. .. ..

I am trying to access the 1st element, "01":

def ElementA (inputFile):
element_A = ""
with open(inputFile, 'r') as inputFile:
    for line in inputFile:
        for i in line.split():
            element_A = i[0:2]
print(element)

For some reason the output is "05". What am I doing wrong?

1 Answers

You are doing a little too much. If you want the first element from each line, you can just do this:

def ElementA (inputFile):
   element_A = ""
   with open(inputFile, 'r') as inputFile:
       for line in inputFile:
           element_A = line[0:2]
           print(element_A)
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