Difference between using commas, concatenation, and string formatters in Python - python

I am learning python(2.7) on my own.
I have learned that we can use the following ways to put strings and variables together in printing:
x = "Hello"
y = "World"
By using commas:
print "I am printing" , x, y # I know that using comma gives automatic space
By using concatenation :
print "I am printing" + " " + x + " " + y
By using string formatters
print "I am printing %s %s" % (x, y)
In this case all three print the same:
I am printing Hello World
What is the difference between the three and are there any particular instances where one is preferred over the other?


To answer the general question first, you would use printing in general to output information in your scripts to the screen when you're writing code to ensure that you're getting what you expect.
As your code becomes more sophisticated, you may find that logging would be better than printing, but that's information for another answer.
There is a big difference between printing and the return values' representations that are echoed in an interactive session with the Python interpreter. Printing should print to your standard output. The echoed representation of the expression's return value (that show up in your Python shell if not None) will be silent when running the equivalent code in scripts.
1. Printing
In Python 2, we had print statements. In Python 3, we get a print function, which we can also use in Python 2.
Print Statements with Commas (Python 2)
The print statement with commas separating items, uses a space to separate them. A trailing comma will cause another space to be appended. No trailing comma will append a newline character to be appended to your printed item.
You could put each item on a separate print statement and use a comma after each and they would print the same, on the same line.
For example (this would only work in a script, in an interactive shell, you'd get a new prompt after every line):
x = "Hello"
y = "World"
print "I am printing",
print x,
print y
Would output:
I am printing Hello World
Print Function
With the built-in print function from Python 3, also available in Python 2.6 and 2.7 with this import:
from __future__ import print_function
you can declare a separator and an end, which gives us a lot more flexibility:
>>> print('hello', 'world', sep='-', end='\n****\n')
hello-world
****
>>>
The defaults are ' ' for sep and '\n' for end:
>>> print('hello', 'world')
hello world
>>>
2. String Concatenation
Concatenation creates each string in memory, and then combines them together at their ends in a new string (so this may not be very memory friendly), and then prints them to your output at the same time. This is good when you need to join strings, likely constructed elsewhere, together.
print('hello' + '-' + 'world')
will print
hello-world
Be careful before you attempt to join in this manner literals of other types to strings, to convert the literals to strings first.
print('here is a number: ' + str(2))
prints
here is a number: 2
If you attempt to concatenate the integer without coercing it to a string first:
>>> print('here is a number: ' + 2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'int' objects
This should demonstrate that you should only ever attempt to concatenate variables that are known to be strings. The new way of formatting demonstrated next handles this issue for you.
3. String Interpolation
The formatting you're demonstrating is the old style of string interpolation, borrowed from C. It takes the old string and one time creates a new one. What it does is fairly straightforward. You should use this when you may seem likely to building up a fairly large template (at 3+ lines and 3+ variables, you definitely should be doing it this way).
The new way of doing that would be to do this (using the index of the arguments):
print('I am printing {0} and {1}'.format(x, y))
or in python 2.7 or 3 (using the implied index):
print('I am printing {} and {}'.format(x, y))
or with named arguments (this is semantically easy to read, but the code doesn't look very DRY (i.e. Don't Repeat Yourself))
print('I am printing {x} and {y}'.format(x=x, y=y))
The biggest benefit of this over % style formatting (not demonstrated here) is that it lets you combine positional and keyword arguments
print('I am printing {0} and {y}'.format(x, y=y))
New in Python 3.6, format literals
Python 3.6 will have format literals, with a more elegant syntax (less redundancy). The simple syntax is something like:
print(f'I am printing {x} and {y}')
The format literals can actually execute code in-place:
>>> print(f'I am printing {"hello".capitalize()} and {"Wo" + "rld"}')
I am printing Hello and World


you should build list and use join with delimiter
for example
",".join(list_name)

Related

Changing a python variable based on its content

I'm writing some stuff with Django and it's becoming a bit of a mess. I'm trying to create an app that can run and return data from up-loadable python modules with a text input field for calling functions.
Most of it's working and I can call functions with no arguments.
The problem is with entering functions which require arguments, as any input that's passed to python is in string form, meaning if I enter: param('a',[foo]) to call the function:
def param(a,b):
return "Hello world" + a + b
The function will return:
"Hello world'a'[foo]"
Basically I need a way to take a string and convert it to literal python code... if that's possible so that I can treat this input box as if it were the python console.
Any ideas? Any help would be greatly welcome! I do realize this isn't a very pythonic way of doing things.
EDIT due to concerns about security: I am not too worried about security issues as this will only ever be a local project.

You can use ast.literal_eval, it is more limited than eval but does not pose the risks:
Safely evaluate an expression node or a Unicode or Latin-1 encoded string containing a Python literal or container display. The string or node provided may only consist of the following Python literal structures: strings, numbers, tuples, lists, dicts, booleans, and None.
from ast import literal_eval
def param(a,b):
return "Hello world" + literal_eval(a) + literal_eval(b)
In [9]: param('" foo"', "'bar'")
Out[9]: 'Hello world foobar'
You can use a try/except to catch when you want a or b are just meant to be strings:

You can use eval for that.
def param(a, b):
return "Hello world" + eval(a) + eval(b)
It will surely produce an error if you try to concatenate a string and a list:
>>> param('", an unsafe world!"', '"!!!"')
'Hello world, an unsafe world!!!!'
>>> param('", an unsafe world!"', '[]')
TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'list' objects
As of getting rid of the quotation marks, I guess you can either add the quotation marks yourself (like eval('"{0}"'.format(a))) or use an ast.literal_eval() as proposed by Padraic.

ElementTree will not parse special characters with Python 2.7

I had to rewrite my python script from python 3 to python2 and after that I got problem parsing special characters with ElementTree.
This is a piece of my xml:
<account number="89890000" type="Kostnad" taxCode="597" vatCode="">Avsättning egenavgifter</account>
This is the ouput when I parse this row:
('account:', '89890000', 'AccountType:', 'Kostnad', 'Name:', 'Avs\xc3\xa4ttning egenavgifter')
So it seems to be a problem with the character "ä".
This is how i do it in the code:
sys.setdefaultencoding( "UTF-8" )
xmltree = ET()
xmltree.parse("xxxx.xml")
printAccountPlan(xmltree)
def printAccountPlan(xmltree):
print("account:",str(i.attrib['number']), "AccountType:",str(i.attrib['type']),"Name:",str(i.text))
Anyone have an ide to get the ElementTree parse the charracter "ä", so the result will be like this:
('account:', '89890000', 'AccountType:', 'Kostnad', 'Name:', 'Avsättning egenavgifter')

You're running into two separate differences between Python 2 and Python 3 at the same time, which is why you're getting unexpected results.
The first difference is one you're probably already aware of: Python's print statement in version 2 became a print function in version 3. That change is creating a special circumstance in your case, which I'll get to a little later. But briefly, this is the difference in how 'print' works:
In Python 3:
>>> # Two arguments 'Hi' and 'there' get passed to the function 'print'.
>>> # They are concatenated with a space separator and printed.
>>> print('Hi', 'there')
>>> Hi there
In Python 2:
>>> # 'print' is a statement which doesn't need parenthesis.
>>> # The parenthesis instead create a tuple containing two elements
>>> # 'Hi' and 'there'. This tuple is then printed.
>>> print('Hi', 'there')
>>> ('Hi', 'there')
The second problem in your case is that tuples print themselves by calling repr() on each of their elements. In Python 3, repr() displays unicode as you want. But in Python 2, repr() uses escape characters for any byte values which fall outside the printable ASCII range (e.g., larger than 127). This is why you're seeing them.
You may decide to resolve this issue, or not, depending on what you're goal is with your code. The representation of a tuple in Python 2 uses escape characters because it's not designed to be displayed to an end-user. It's more for your internal convenience as a developer, for troubleshooting and similar tasks. If you're simply printing it for yourself, then you may not need to change a thing because Python is showing you that the encoded bytes for that non-ASCII character are correctly there in your string. If you do want to display something to the end-user which has the format of how tuples look, then one way to do it (which retains correct printing of unicode) is to manually create the formatting, like this:
def printAccountPlan(xmltree):
data = (i.attrib['number'], i.attrib['type'], i.text)
print "('account:', '%s', 'AccountType:', '%s', 'Name:', '%s')" % data
# Produces this:
# ('account:', '89890000', 'AccountType:', 'Kostnad', 'Name:', 'Avsättning egenavgifter')

How to split a string of Python source code into Python "statements"?

Given a string s containing (syntactically valid) Python source code, how can I split s into an array whose elements are the strings corresponding to the Python "statements" in s?
I put scare-quotes around "statements" because this term does not capture exactly what I'm looking for. Rather than trying to come up with a more accurate wording, here's an example. Compare the following two ipython interactions:
In [1]: if 1 > 0:
......: pass
......:
In [2]: if 1 > 0
File "<ipython-input-1082-0b411f095922>", line 1
if 1 > 0
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
In the first interaction, after the first [RETURN] statement, ipython processes the input if 1 > 0: without objection, even though it is still incomplete (i.e. it is not a full Python statement). In contrast, in the second interaction, the input is not only incomplete (in this sense), but also not acceptable to ipython.
As a second, more complete example, suppose the file foo.py contains the following Python source code:
def print_vertically(s):
'''A pretty useless procedure.
Prints the characters in its argument one per line.
'''
for c in s:
print c
greeting = ('hello '
'world'.
upper())
print_vertically(greeting)
Now, if I ran the following snippet, featuring the desired split_python_source function:
src = open('foo.py').read()
for i, s in enumerate(split_python_source(src)):
print '%d. >>>%s<<<' % (i, s)
the output would look like this:
0. >>>def print_vertically(s):<<<
1. >>> '''A pretty useless procedure.
Prints the characters in its argument one per line.
'''<<<
2. >>> for c in s:<<<
3. >>> print c<<<
4. >>>greeting = ('hello '
'world'.
upper())<<<
5. >>>print_vertically(greeting)<<<
As you can see, in this splitting, for c in s: (for example) gets assigned to its own item, rather being part of some "compound statement."
In fact, I don't have a very precise specification for how the splitting should be done, as long as it is done "at the joints" (like ipython does).

I'm not familiar with the internals of the Python lexer (though almost certainly many people on SO are :), but my guess is that you're basically looking for lines, with one important exception : paired open-close delimiters that can span multiple lines.
As a quick and dirty first pass, you might be able to start with something that splits a piece of code on newlines, and then you could merge successive lines that are found to contain paired delimiters -- parentheses (), braces {}, brackets [], and quotes '', ''' ''' are the ones that come to mind.

String Delimiter in Python

I want to do split a string using "},{" as the delimiter. I have tried various things but none of them work.
string="2,1,6,4,5,1},{8,1,4,9,6,6,7,0},{6,1,2,3,9},{2,3,5,4,3 "
Split it into something like this:
2,1,6,4,5,1
8,1,4,9,6,6,7,0
6,1,2,3,9
2,3,5,4,3
string.split("},{") works at the Python console but if I write a Python script in which do this operation it does not work.

You need to assign the result of string.split("},{") to a new string. For example:
string2 = string.split("},{")
I think that is the reason you think it works at the console but not in scripts. In the console it just prints out the return value, but in the script you want to make sure you use the returned value.

You need to return the string back to the caller. Assigning to the string parameter doesn't change the caller's variable, so those changes are lost.
def convert2list(string):
string = string.strip()
string = string[2:len(string)-2].split("},{")
# Return to caller.
return string
# Grab return value.
converted = convert2list("{1,2},{3,4}")

You could do it in steps:
Split at commas to get "{...}" strings.
Remove leading and trailing curly braces.
It might not be the most Pythonic or efficient, but it's general and doable.

I was taking the input from the console in the form of arguments to the script....
So when I was taking the input as {{2,4,5},{1,9,4,8,6,6,7},{1,2,3},{2,3}} it was not coming properly in the arg[1] .. so the split was basically splitting on an empty string ...

If I run the below code from a script file (in Python 2.7):
string="2,1,6,4,5,1},{8,1,4,9,6,6,7,0},{6,1,2,3,9},{2,3,5,4,3 "
print string.split("},{")
Then the output I got is:
['2,1,6,4,5,1', '8,1,4,9,6,6,7,0', '6,1,2,3,9', '2,3,5,4,3 ']
And the below code also works fine:
string="2,1,6,4,5,1},{8,1,4,9,6,6,7,0},{6,1,2,3,9},{2,3,5,4,3 "
def convert2list(string):
string=string.strip()
string=string[:len(string)].split("},{")
print string
convert2list(string)

Use This:
This will split the string considering },{ as a delimiter and print the list with line breaks.
string = "2,1,6,4,5,1},{8,1,4,9,6,6,7,0},{6,1,2,3,9},{2,3,5,4,3"
for each in string.split('},{'):
print each
Output:
2,1,6,4,5,1
8,1,4,9,6,6,7,0
6,1,2,3,9
2,3,5,4,3
If you want to print the split items in the list only you can use this simple print option.
string = "2,1,6,4,5,1},{8,1,4,9,6,6,7,0},{6,1,2,3,9},{2,3,5,4,3"
print string.split('},{')
Output:
['2,1,6,4,5,1', '8,1,4,9,6,6,7,0', '6,1,2,3,9', '2,3,5,4,3']

Quite simply ,you have to use split() method ,and "},{" as a delimeter, then print according to arguments (because string will be a list ) ,
like the following :
string.split("},{")
for i in range(0,len(string)):
print(string[i])

String formatting issues and concatenating a string with a number

I'm coming from a c# background, and I do this:
Console.Write("some text" + integerValue);
So the integer automatically gets converted to a string and it outputs.
In python I get an error when I do:
print 'hello' + 10
Do I have to convert to string everytime?
How would I do this in python?
String.Format("www.someurl.com/{0}/blah.html", 100);
I'm beginning to really like python, thanks for all your help!

From Python 2.6:
>>> "www.someurl.com/{0}/blah.html".format(100)
'www.someurl.com/100/blah.html'
To support older environments, the % operator has a similar role:
>>> "www.someurl.com/%d/blah.html" % 100
'www.someurl.com/100/blah.html'
If you would like to support named arguments, then you can can pass a dict.
>>> url_args = {'num' : 100 }
>>> "www.someurl.com/%(num)d/blah.html" % url_args
'www.someurl.com/100/blah.html'
In general, when types need to be mixed, I recommend string formatting:
>>> '%d: %s' % (1, 'string formatting',)
'1: string formatting'
String formatting coerces objects into strings by using their __str__ methods.[*] There is much more detailed documentation available on Python string formatting in the docs. This behaviour is different in Python 3+, as all strings are unicode.
If you have a list or tuple of strings, the join method is quite convenient. It applies a separator between all elements of the iterable.
>>> ' '.join(['2:', 'list', 'of', 'strings'])
'2: list of strings'
If you are ever in an environment where you need to support a legacy environment, (e.g. Python <2.5), you should generally avoid string concatenation. See the article referenced in the comments.
[*] Unicode strings use the __unicode__ method.
>>> u'3: %s' % ':)'
u'3: :)'

>>> "www.someurl.com/{0}/blah.html".format(100)
'www.someurl.com/100/blah.html'
you can skip 0 in python 2.7 or 3.1.

Additionally to string formatting, you can always print like this:
print "hello", 10
Works since those are separate arguments and print converts non-string arguments to strings (and inserts a space in between).

For string formatting that includes different types of values, use the % to insert the value into a string:
>>> intvalu = 10
>>> print "hello %i"%intvalu
hello 10
>>>
so in your example:
>>>print "www.someurl.com/%i/blah.html"%100
www.someurl.com/100/blah.html
In this example I'm using %i as the stand-in. This changes depending on what variable type you need to use. %s would be for strings. There is a list here on the python docs website.

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