gmane.comp.python.tutor

Re: Python Docs (Was: Reformatting phone number)

Kent Johnson — 2008-08-21T16:58:55

and somehow you missed # 3.6.1 String Methods # 3.6.2 String Formatting Operations which even should have come first in your search. But the *very next page*, called "Deprecated string functions", links to 3.6.1 which is what you want. I think it looks like you are not trying very hard, or that you are letting your expectations color your search too much. At the bottom of every page in the docs it says, "See About this document... [link] for information on suggesting changes." Specific suggestions for improvement are more likely to be well received than complaints. I guess I am a little defensive here, I think the docs are pretty good. It's true that beginners don't realize that so much meat is in the library reference, I'm not sure how to make that more obvious. But your particular problems in finding endswith() in the LR I think come from you wearing PHP-colored blinders. Kent _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor< at >python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman

Re: Problems with Gauge Bar.

Olrik Lenstra — 2008-08-21T16:27:13

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Python Docs (Was: Reformatting phone number)

Dotan Cohen — 2008-08-21T16:13:59

2008/8/21 W W gmail.com>: Thanks. Searching for startswith(), assuming that I do not know the name of it, leads me to the same p

Python Docs (Was: Reformatting phone number)

Dotan Cohen — 2008-08-21T16:01:46

2008/8/21 Kent Johnson tds.net>: Let's start from there. I need the startswith() function, but I do not know it's name. I search for "strings" and find this: 4. String Services * 4.1 string -- Common string operations o 4.1.3 String functions But on that page, this is all there is: """ The following functions are available to operate on string and Unicode objects. They are not available as string methods. capwords( s) [snip description] maketrans( from, to) [snip description] Warning: Don't use strings derived from lowercase and uppercase as arguments; in some locales, these don't have the same length. For case conversions, always use lower() and upper(). "" So Python has only two string functions? That's what it looks like. I will start with those, thanks. Thanks, Kent. I will be a nuisance! Is there any place to suggest improvements to the docs? I see on the python.org site it is suggested to email website bugs to the site admin. Does that go for the docs? I am not the one

Re: Reformatting phone number

W W — 2008-08-21T11:31:09

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Re: Reformatting phone number

Dotan Cohen — 2008-08-21T10:13:58

2008/8/21 OmerT gmail.com>: Exactly- that only works for term, classes, and functions that you already know the name of. The php docs have a list of all the functions with a one-line description. It's very easy to find which funtion performs what one needs. I would have never found the startswith() function with the current document structure. But I suppose that is subject for another thread, which I am sure would degrade quickly into a flamewar. I don't want to be the cause of that :)

Re: Reformatting phone number

Kent Johnson — 2008-08-21T10:50:10

Chapters 2 and 3 of the library reference are highly recommended. http://docs.python.org/lib/lib.html In particular: 2.1 Built-in Functions lists all globally available functions (functions that are not part of a class) 3.6 Sequence Types gives operations on strings, lists and tuples (which are all sequences) 3.6.1 String Methods includes endswith() 3.8 Mapping Types -- dict etc. Many Python functions are grouped into library modules. You could consider this to be the grouping by category that you want. The rest of the library reference (after chapter 3) documents the modules. Browse the table of contents to see what is available. And you are welcome to ask this group if you can't find what you are looking for. Kent _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor< at >python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor

Re: Merging table-like files with overlapping values in onecolumn

Kent Johnson — 2008-08-21T10:42:31

Yes, as long as the order of entries doesn't matter - a dict does not preserve order. Make a dict that maps a key to a list of values (collections.defaultdict is useful for this). Read each file and add its pairs to the dict. Then iterate the dict and write to a new file. If you do care about order, there are various implementations of ordered dictionaries available. Kent _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor< at >python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor

Merging table-like files with overlapping values in onecolumn

Kat — 2008-08-21T09:56:49

Hi all, I'm new to Python and trying to come up with an elegant way of tackling the following problem. Sorry for the lengthy description: I have several input files where in each file, every line has a space-separated pair values. The files are essentially tables with two columns. There are no duplicates in the first column values within each file, but they overlap when all files are considered. I'd like to merge them into one file according to values of the first column of each file with values from the second column of all files combined like this: First file: bar 100 foo 90 yadda 22 Second file: bar 78 yadda 120 ziggy 99 Combined file: bar 100 78 foo 90 NONE yadda 22 120 ziggy NONE 99 I'm considering several approaches. In the first brute force way, I can read in each file, parse it into lines, parse lines into words, and write the values from the second word to a new output file along with the first word. That seems awful. My second idea is to convert each file into a dictionary (since the first co

Re: programming tic tac toe

Emile van Sebille — 2008-08-21T08:03:50

#Assuming you number the board positions as: #board = [ [0,1,2], # [3,4,5], # [6,7,8] ] #then you could define the winning combinations as: winners = [ (0,1,2),(3,4,5),(6,7,8), #rows (0,3,6),(1,4,7),(2,5,8), #cols (0,4,8),(6,4,2) #diags ] #and return all these combinations from the current board with: def mapped(board): return [ (board[i/3][i%3],board[j/3][j%3],board[k/3][k%3]) for i,j,k in winners] #and finally, assuming you're using X's and Y's, #identify a winning line with: def line(board): if ( ('X','X','X') in mapped(board) or ('Y','Y','Y') in mapped(board) ): return True return False #now two test cases board = ([['X','Y','Y'], ['Y','X','X'], ['Y','X','Y'] ]) print line(board) board = ([['X','Y','Y'], ['Y','X','X'], ['Y','Y','X'] ]) print line(board) HTH, Emile _____________________________________________

Re: Reformatting phone number

OmerT — 2008-08-21T07:32:14

mostly, I google "docs.python" and the term or class I'm looking for. Mind, this mainly works for modules or classes which came with the interpreter. G'luck. On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Dotan Cohen gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor< at >python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor

Re: Reformatting phone number

Dotan Cohen — 2008-08-21T06:13:21

2008/8/21 Robert Berman embarqmail.com>: I don't have more of a C background than a one-semester course in university. But the details between the languages are night and day. I am enjoying Python. I recently heard that Python is like writing psuedo-code that runs. I am seeing that this is true. I especially love the use of indentation for block demarcation. Error are certainly the best way to learn. Thanks.

Re: Reformatting phone number

Dotan Cohen — 2008-08-21T06:08:07

2008/8/21 Kent Johnson tds.net>: Nice! I had looked for this type of function, but could not find it. Is there a list of functions, organized by categories, for Python? Take for example these pages from te php documentation: http://il.php.net/manual/en/book.strings.php http://il.php.net/manual/en/book.array.php http://il.php.net/manual/en/book.math.php which are all linked from: http://il.php.net/manual/en/funcref.php Is there anything like this for Python? If not, I am willing to code the site if some Python gurus will help contribute their knowledge. This I have read, while googling this thread. This I will read, to keep up to speed. Thanks!

Re: programming tic tac toe

Alan Gauld — 2008-08-21T05:53:50

"Ark" gmail.com> wrote Given that there are always 3x3 cells on an oxo board and therefore only 8 possible winning lines hard coding is probably a reasonable approach. You could make it into a single boolean condition which would be slightly less typing and slightly faster but otherwise what you have is fine I think: def line(board): return board[0][0] == board[0][1] == board[0][2] or board[1][0] == board[1][1] == board[1][2] or ... board[2][0] == board[1][1] == board[[0][2] But I'm not sure its that much nicer! :-) For the more general case of an NxN board then you should probably consider using a loop and relative indexing but for 3x3 hard coded is better IMHO.

programming tic tac toe

Ark — 2008-08-21T00:30:32

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Re: Reformatting phone number

Kent Johnson — 2008-08-20T23:41:26

Another way to write this is if sys.argv[1].startswith('0'): You need to learn about slicing. This is a way of indexing any sequence, including strings. See http://docs.python.org/tut/node5.html#SECTION005120000000000000000 http://docs.python.org/lib/typesseq.html In particular, you want number = '+972' + sys.argv[1][1:] which takes all characters of argv[0] after the first. Kent _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor< at >python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor

Re: Reformatting phone number

Dotan Cohen — 2008-08-20T22:38:31

2008/8/21 Robert Berman embarqmail.com>: It does help, and I will make a point of familiarizing myself with the errors reported by runtime errors (is this a valid term in Python, as there are no compile errors) such as those generated from code like this: s='hello, world!' s=int(s)

Re: Reformatting phone number

Dotan Cohen — 2008-08-20T22:39:47

2008/8/21 Alan Gauld btinternet.com>: This characteristic is similar enough to php (a language where one doesn't even think about types) that I will get used to it. Thanks.

Re: Reformatting phone number

Alan Gauld — 2008-08-20T22:29:45

"Dotan Cohen" gmail.com> wrote In Python values have types and variables are simply names associated with values. Thus v = '123' # v 'is' a string because '123' is a string v = 123 # now v 'is' an int because 123 is an int. The variable takes on the type of the value with which it is associated but it can be made to refer to any other value and thus its type effectively changes. So it's best not to think of variables having types but rather consider objects (or values) as having a type, and variables as being associated with objects.. This is one of the most fundamental characteristics of Python and one of the hardest for users of other languages to adapt to. HTH,

Re: Reformatting phone number

Robert Berman — 2008-08-20T22:08:47

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Re: Reformatting phone number

Dotan Cohen — 2008-08-20T21:27:30

2008/8/21 Robert Berman embarqmail.com>: Perhaps. In php the distinction was made by the fact that there were no non-numerical characters in a string. I don't know enough Python to know if this is the case. Can I declare a variable type in Python as in C?