Code used to pull the unique actors from the GDELT dataset.

unique_actors.py

from path import path
import pandas as pd

unique_actors = dict()
lengths = list()
for in_file in path.getcwd().files('*.reduced.txt'):
    data = open(in_file, 'r')
    print "%s data read in...subsetting" % (in_file)
    for line in data:
        line = line.replace('\n', '')
        split_line = line.split('\t')
        try:
            if not unique_actors.get(split_line[1]): 
                unique_actors[split_line[1]] = 1
                lengths.append(len(split_line[1]))
            elif unique_actors.get(split_line[1]):
                unique_actors[split_line[1]] += 1

            if not unique_actors.get(split_line[2]):
                unique_actors[split_line[2]] = 1
                lengths.append(len(split_line[1]))
            elif unique_actors.get(split_line[2]):
                unique_actors[split_line[2]] += 1
        except IndexError:
            pass

print len(unique_actors.keys())
print max(lengths)

data = pd.Series(unique_actors)
data.to_csv('unique_actors.csv')