Read from text file and assign data to new variable - file

Question

Python 3 program allows people to choose from list of employee names.
Data held on text file look like this: ('larry', 3, 100)
(being the persons name, weeks worked and payment)
I need a way to assign each part of the text file to a new variable,
so that the user can enter a new amount of weeks and the program calculates the new payment.
Below is my code and attempt at figuring it out.
import os
choices = [f for f in os.listdir(os.curdir) if f.endswith(".txt")]
print (choices)
emp_choice = input("choose an employee:")
file = open(emp_choice + ".txt")
data = file.readlines()
name = data[0]
weeks_worked = data[1]
weekly_payment= data[2]
new_weeks = int(input ("Enter new number of weeks"))
new_payment = new_weeks * weekly_payment
print (name + "will now be paid" + str(new_payment))

Answer 1

currently you are assigning the first three lines form the file to name, weeks_worked and weekly_payment. but what you want (i think) is to separate a single line, formatted as ('larry', 3, 100) (does each file have only one line?).
so you probably want code like:
from re import compile
# your code to choose file
line_format = compile(r"\s*\(\s*'([^']*)'\s*,\s*(\d+)\s*,\s*(\d+)\s*\)")
file = open(emp_choice + ".txt")
line = file.readline() # read the first line only
match = line_format.match(line)
if match:
name, weeks_worked, weekly_payment = match.groups()
else:
raise Exception('Could not match %s' % line)
# your code to update information
the regular expression looks complicated, but is really quite simple:
\(...\) matches the parentheses in the line
\s* matches optional spaces (it's not clear to me if you have spaces or not
in various places between words, so this matches just in case)
\d+ matches a number (1 or more digits)
[^']* matches anything except a quote (so matches the name)
(...) (without the \ backslashes) indicates a group that you want to read
afterwards by calling .groups()
and these are built from simpler parts (like * and + and \d) which are described at http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html
if you want to repeat this for many lines, you probably want something like:
name, weeks_worked, weekly_payment = [], [], []
for line in file.readlines():
match = line_format.match(line)
if match:
name.append(match.group(1))
weeks_worked.append(match.group(2))
weekly_payment.append(match.group(3))
else:
raise ...