def findFirstDigitInString(string: str) -> str: length_of_string = len(string) i = 0 while i < length_of_string : if ( string[i].isdigit()): return string[i] i+=1 numbers = [] with open("input.txt") as file: line = file.readline() while line: firstdigit =findFirstDigitInString(line) lastdigit = findFirstDigitInString(line[::-1]) # doing the same for the string in reverse will get the last digit digit = firstdigit + lastdigit digit = int(digit) print(f"found: {digit}") numbers.append(digit) line = file.readline() print(numbers) # now we'll need to sum them sum = 0 for n in numbers: sum += n print(f"sum: {sum}")