How does comparing two chars (within a string) work in Python - python

I am starting to learn Python and looked at following website: https://www.w3resource.com/python-exercises/string/
I work on #4 which is "Write a Python program to get a string from a given string where all occurrences of its first char have been changed to '$', except the first char itself."
str="restart"
char=str[0]
print(char)
strcpy=str
i=1
for i in range(len(strcpy)):
print(strcpy[i], "\n")
if strcpy[i] is char:
strcpy=strcpy.replace(strcpy[i], '$')
print(strcpy)
I would expect "resta$t" but the actual result is: $esta$t
Thank you for your help!

There are two issues, first, you are not starting iteration where you think you are:
i = 1 # great, i is 1
for i in range(5):
print(i)
0
1
2
3
4
i has been overwritten by the value tracking the loop.
Second, the is does not mean value equivalence. That is reserved for the == operator. Simpler types such as int and str can make it seem like is works in this fashion, but other types do not behave this way:
a, b = 5, 5
a is b
True
a, b = "5", "5"
a is b
True
a==b
True
### This doesn't work
a, b = [], []
a is b
False
a == b
True
As #Kevin pointed out in the comments, 99% of the time, is is not the operator you want.
As far as your code goes, str.replace will replace all instances of the argument supplied with the second arg, unless you give it an optional number of instances to replace. To avoid replacing the first character, grab the first char separately, like val = somestring[0], then replace the rest using a slice, no need for iteration:
somestr = 'restart' # don't use str as a variable name
val = somestr[0] # val is 'r'
# somestr[1:] gives 'estart'
x = somestr[1:].replace(val, '$')
print(val+x)
# resta$t
If you still want to iterate, you can do that over the slice as well:
# collect your letters into a list
letters = []
char = somestr[0]
for letter in somestr[1:]: # No need to track an index here
if letter == char: # don't use is, use == for value comparison
letter = '$' # change letter to a different value if it is equal to char
letters.append(letter)
# Then use join to concatenate back to a string
print(char + ''.join(letters))
# resta$t

There are some need of modification on your code.
Modify your code with as given in below.
strcpy="restart"
i=1
for i in range(len(strcpy)):
strcpy=strcpy.replace(strcpy[0], '$')[:]
print(strcpy)
# $esta$t
Also, the best practice to write code in Python is to use Function. You can modify your code as given below or You can use this function.
def charreplace(s):
return s.replace(s[0],'$')[:]
charreplace("restart")
#'$esta$t'
Hope this helpful.

Related

Occurrence of a letter case sensitive

I am trying to find occurrence of letter 'b' and 'B'. the code that I have written works perfectly. Is there a better way that i can do this.
My code:
def count_letter_b(string):
#TODO: Your code goes here
a = int(string.count('B'))
b = int(string.count('b'))
return a + b
print count_letter_b("Bubble Bungle")
You can turn the string to uppercase (or lowercase), then count the occurrences:
string.upper().count('B')
So, overall, your code will look like this:
def count_letter_b(string):
return string.upper().count('B')
Note: no need to cast to int(..) as the result of str.count is already an int
Well if you only want to apply the same computation to a varying amount of letters you may want them to be arguments (count_letter(s, letters)), but anyway, here is a more functional example:
def count_letter_b(string):
return sum(map(string.count, 'Bb'))
This uses the str.count version that is bound to your input string instance.
Note that you're shadowing the name string if you use it as a parameter name.
You could do
# count in upper string, upper character
def countInvariantChars(c,s):
return s.upper().count(c.upper())
# list comprehensions + length
def countInvariantChars2(c,s):
return len([x for x in s if c.upper() == x.upper()])
# sum ones of list comprehension
def countInvariantChars3(c,s):
return sum([1 for x in s if c.upper() == x.upper()])
print(countInvariantChars("b","Bubble Bungle"))
print(countInvariantChars2("b","Bubble Bungle"))
print(countInvariantChars3("b","Bubble Bungle"))
Output (pyfiddle.io):
read-only#bash: 4
4
4
Use this:
def count_letter_b(string):
return string.lower().count('b')
print(count_letter_b(string))

Replace multiple characters in a string with one from a generator

I'm looking for a way to take a string that looks like the following:
(a,1),(b,1),(a,1),(b,5),(a,1),(b,2),(a,1),(b,1),(a,2),(b,6),(a,2)
And replace the first "a" with an even number, the second with the next
up even number, and so on for however long the string is. Then I'd like to take the first "b" and assign it an odd number, then the next "b" gets the
next highest odd number, and so on for however long the string is. I'm
working primarily in Python 2.7, but would be willing to look into other languages if a solution exists in that.
The following regular expression substitution should work:
import re
def odd_even(x):
global a,b
if x.group(1) == 'a':
a += 2
return str(a)
else:
b += 2
return str(b)
a = 0
b = -1
source = "(a,1),(b,1),(a,1),(b,5),(a,1),(b,2),(a,1),(b,1),(a,2),(b,6),(a,2)"
print re.sub("([ab])", odd_even, source)
This prints:
(2,1),(1,1),(4,1),(3,5),(6,1),(5,2),(8,1),(7,1),(10,2),(9,6),(12,2)
even = 2
while "a" in string:
string = string.replace("a", str(even), 1)
even += 2
odd = 1
while "b" in string:
string = string.replace("b", str(odd), 1)
odd += 2

moving integers from one string to another?

I am looking at adding numbers to a string as python reads through a string.
So if I had a string a = "253+"
I would then have an empty string b.
So, how would I have python read the 2, add it to string b, then read the 5 and add it to string b, and then add the 5 and add it to string b, when it hits something that isnt an integer though, it stops the function.
then string b would be b = "253"
is there a specific call in an iteration that would ask for integers and then add i to another string?
tl;dr
I want to use an iteration to add numbers from one string to another, which stops when it reaches a non-integer.
string b would be an empty string, and string a would be a="253+"
after the call would be done, strng b would equal b="253"
I know this sounds like a homework question, but its not. If you need anything else clarified, I would be happy to.
Here is a simple method for extracting the digits from a string:
In [13]: a="253+"
In [14]: ''.join(c for c in a if c.isdigit())
Out[14]: '253'
The question is a bit unclear, but is this what you're looking for?
a = "123+"
b=""
for c in a:
try:
int(c)
b = b + c
except ValueError:
print 'This is not an int ' + c
break
Running this results in this b being 123 and breaking on the + character. It sounds like the part that's tricky for you at the moment is the try..except ValueError bit. Not that I don't have to break the loop when a ValueError happens, I could just keep looping over the remaining characters in the string and ignore ones that cannot be parsed into an int
In [201]: import itertools as IT
In [202]: a = "253+9"
In [203]: ''.join(IT.takewhile(str.isdigit, a))
Out[203]: '253'
IT.takewhile will stop at the first character in a which is not a digit.
Another way would be to use a regex pattern. You could split the string on non-digits using the pattern r'\D':
In [208]: import re
In [209]: re.split(r'\D', a, maxsplit=1)[0]
Out[209]: '253'
With the use of the for loop, this is relatively easy. If we use our ASCII knowledge, we know that the ASCII values of the digits range from 48 (which represents 0 as a string) to 57 (which represents 9 as a string).
We can find the ASCII value of a character by using the built in method ord(x) where x is the character (i.e. ord('4') is equal to 52, the integer).
Now that we have this knowledge, it will be easy to add this to our for-loop. We simply make a for-loop that goes from 0 to the length of the string minus 1. In the for loop, we are going to use the iteration that we are on as an index, find the character at that index in our string, and finally check to see if its ord value falls in the range that we want.
This will look something like this:
def method(just_a_variable):
b = ''
for i in range(0, len(a)):
if (#something):
if (#something):
b = b+a[i]
return b
Can you fill in the "#somethings"?
Try this:
a = "i889i" #Initial value of A
b = "" #Empty string to store result into
for each in a: #iterate through all characters of a
if each.isdigit(): #check if the current character is a digit
b += each #append to b if the current character is a digit
else: #if current character is NOT a digit
break #break out of for loop
print b #print out result
Hope this helps!
You can write a generator with a regex and generate them one by one:
>>> import re
>>> s='123+456abc789'
>>> nums=(m.group(1) for m in re.finditer(r'(\d+)', s))
>>> next(nums)
'123'
>>> next(nums)
'456'
>>> next(nums)
'789'

Create Your Own Find String Function

For a school project I have to create a function called find_str that essentially does the same thing as the .find string method, but we cannot use any string methods in our definition.
The project description reads: "Function find_str has two parameters (both strings). It returns the lowest index where the second parameter is found within the first parameter (it returns -1 if the second parameter is not found within the first parameter)."
I have spent a lot of time working on this project and have yet to come to a solution. This is the current definition that I have come up with:
def find_str (string, substring):
index = 0
length = len (substring)
for ch in string:
if ch == substring [0]:
subindex1 = 0
subindex2 = index
for i in range (length):
if ch == substring [i]:
subindex1 +=1
if subindex1 == length:
return index
ch = string [(subindex2)+1]
subindex2 +=1
index += 1
return "-1"
This sample of code only works in some instances, but not all.
For example:
print (find_str ("hello", "llo"))
returns:
2
as it should.
But
print (find_str ("hello", "el"))
returns:
ch = string [(subindex2)+1]
IndexError: string index out of range
I feel like I am overthinking this and there must be is an easier way to do it. Any input or help would be great! Thanks.
FFUsing a sub function to clear your thoughts often help.
def find_str (string, substring):
index = 0
length = len (substring)
for j in range(len(string)):
if is_next_sub(string, substring, j):
return j
return "-1"
def is_next_sub(string, substring, index):
for i in range(len(substring)):
if substring[i] != string[index + i]:
return False
return True
I'm not sure we should be helping you with 'homework'
How about this:
def find_str(string, substring):
for off in xrange(len(string)):
if string[off:].startswith(substring):
return off
return -1
I haven't checked through your code in detail, but it looks like you're trying to compare characters that don't exist.
Suppose you're searching "aaaaa" for the substring "aaa", and you need to find all matches...
String : aaaaa
Match at 0 : aaa..
Match at 1 : .aaa.
Match at 2 : ..aaa
Even though the characters always match, and there five characters in the string, there are only three positions that you might need to consider.
So before you look at the actual characters at all, you can restrict the number of start positions you might need to consider based on the lengths of the string and substring. You only loop for those start positions. That means you're not looping for start positions that cannot match. Also, if you don't do this...
String : aaaaa
Match at 0 : aaa..
Match at 1 : .aaa.
Match at 2 : ..aaa
Match at 3 : ...aa!
Match at 4 : ....a!!
Those exclamation points are places where you try to match a character in the substring with a character that doesn't exist, after the end of the string. You can check for that within the loop to avoid the error each time it occurs, but why not eliminate all those cases at once by not looping for the match positions that cannot occur?
The number of start positions you may need to check is len(fullstring) + 1 - len(substring), so you can derive a range of possible start positions using range(0, len(fullstring) + 1 - len(substring)).

Swapping every second character in a string in Python

I have the following problem: I would like to write a function in Python which, given a string, returns a string where every group of two characters is swapped.
For example given "ABCDEF" it returns "BADCFE".
The length of the string would be guaranteed to be an even number.
Can you help me how to do it in Python?
To add another option:
>>> s = 'abcdefghijkl'
>>> ''.join([c[1] + c[0] for c in zip(s[::2], s[1::2])])
'badcfehgjilk'
import re
print re.sub(r'(.)(.)', r'\2\1', "ABCDEF")
from itertools import chain, izip_longest
''.join(chain.from_iterable(izip_longest(s[1::2], s[::2], fillvalue = '')))
You can also use islices instead of regular slices if you have very large strings or just want to avoid the copying.
Works for odd length strings even though that's not a requirement of the question.
While the above solutions do work, there is a very simple solution shall we say in "layman's" terms. Someone still learning python and string's can use the other answers but they don't really understand how they work or what each part of the code is doing without a full explanation by the poster as opposed to "this works". The following executes the swapping of every second character in a string and is easy for beginners to understand how it works.
It is simply iterating through the string (any length) by two's (starting from 0 and finding every second character) and then creating a new string (swapped_pair) by adding the current index + 1 (second character) and then the actual index (first character), e.g., index 1 is put at index 0 and then index 0 is put at index 1 and this repeats through iteration of string.
Also added code to ensure string is of even length as it only works for even length.
string = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123"
# use this prior to below iteration if string needs to be even but is possibly odd
if len(string) % 2 != 0:
string = string[:-1]
# iteration to swap every second character in string
swapped_pair = ""
for i in range(0, len(string), 2):
swapped_pair += (string[i + 1] + string[i])
# use this after above iteration for any even or odd length of strings
if len(swapped_pair) % 2 != 0:
swapped_adj += swapped_pair[-1]
print(swapped_pair)
badcfehgjilknmporqtsvuxwzy21 # output if the "needs to be even" code used
badcfehgjilknmporqtsvuxwzy213 # output if the "even or odd" code used
Here's a nifty solution:
def swapem (s):
if len(s) < 2: return s
return "%s%s%s"%(s[1], s[0], swapem (s[2:]))
for str in ("", "a", "ab", "abcdefgh", "abcdefghi"):
print "[%s] -> [%s]"%(str, swapem (str))
though possibly not suitable for large strings :-)
Output is:
[] -> []
[a] -> [a]
[ab] -> [ba]
[abcdefgh] -> [badcfehg]
[abcdefghi] -> [badcfehgi]
If you prefer one-liners:
''.join(reduce(lambda x,y: x+y,[[s[1+(x<<1)],s[x<<1]] for x in range(0,len(s)>>1)]))
Here's a another simple solution:
"".join([(s[i:i+2])[::-1]for i in range(0,len(s),2)])

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