remove multiple lines with characters in txt file in python

June 13, 2023

I have multiple txt files like this :

https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/dbgap/studies/phs001672/analyses/phs001672.pha004730.txt

The file is saved in C:\Users\test.txt

How can we remove the first lines with the comments (lets say 20 lines) and save a new csv file only with the table in python ?

>Solution :

You can use read_table with a custom comment :

url = "https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/dbgap/studies/"
      "phs001672/analyses/phs001672.pha004730.txt"

df = pd.read_table(url, comment="#")

Output :

print(df)

              ID  Analysis ID       SNP ID  ...  Coded Allele  Sample size  Bin ID
0      506214698         4730    rs1300646  ...             A         8542       6
1      506218329         4730   rs76749734  ...             A          942     158
2      506216207         4730   rs80286553  ...             A        90924      26
...          ...          ...          ...  ...           ...          ...     ...
31662  506245867         4730   rs71334010  ...             A       317118    1422
31663  506245880         4730  rs113480342  ...             A       314121    1422
31664  506245884         4730  rs140069817  ...             T       307546    1422

[31665 rows x 22 columns]