Urgent!HELP ME, PLEASEEEE!!

[eleonora]

I am a python newbie and i have trouble with those 2 exercises:

1.A date of the form "8-MAR-85" includes the name of the month, which must be translated to a number. Create a dictionary suitable for decoding month names to numbers. I have to create a function which uses string operations to split the date into 3 items using the "-" character. Then i have to translate the month, correct the year to include all of the digits. At the end, the function will accept a date in the "dd-MMM-yy" format and respond with a tuple of (y, m, d).

2.i have to create a function that will read from a text file and put words of it in random order and create in that way a poem(it will ask the user how many lines iit will be and how many words in each line). at the end it will ask the user whether to save it to a text file or to call the function again.

Please could you help me?PLEASEEEEE!
Thanks in advance,
Eleonora

[jrcagle]

With both programs, the place to start is with a couple of examples: "8-MAR-85", "12-DEC-1970", etc. and

(a) work them out by hand,
(b) describe to yourself how you did it, and
(c) write code to do the same.

That's how I write my code.

Jeff

[eleonora]

Could you please be more specific ? Especially for the exercise with months. I tried to solve the first exercise but I did this:

def month2number(ddmmmyy):
    dictionary = {'Jan':1,'Feb':2,'Mar':3....}
    split = ddmmmyy.split('-')
and I don't know how to continue! Could you please help me?

Thanks again!

[vegaseat]

Well, it is our policy on the forum not to do homework for you, but here are some elaborations (tests) that should help you in a hintful way ...

# months abbreviated dictionary (created from a list)
mad = {'MAR': 3, 'FEB': 2, 'AUG': 8, 'SEP': 9, 
    'APR': 4, 'JUN': 6, 'JUL': 7, 'JAN': 1, 
    'MAY': 5, 'NOV': 11, 'DEC': 12, 'OCT': 10}

date = "25-DEC-1970"
date_list = date.split('-')

# note that the month abbreviation is at index 1
print date_list  # ['25', 'DEC', '1970']

# make sure case is consistent with dictionary, all upper case
month_abbrev = date_list[1].upper()

# now get the value from the dictionary (giving it the key)
month_number = mad[month_abbrev]

# test it ...
print date, "-->", month_number  # 25-DEC-1970 --> 12

# the other numbers ...
day_number = int(date_list[0])
year_number = int(date_list[2])

print day_number, month_number, year_number  # 25 12 1970

I assume this is an example from the last century, so when your year_number is less than 100 simply add 1900 to it.

[eleonora]

Thank you very much! I'm done with the first problem! I appreciate your help! But for the second exercise I still have a problem how to save the output to a text file...could you give me a clue please?

[vegaseat]

Writing and reading a text file is easy with Python ...

mytext = "this is my text I want to write to a file"

filename = 'test.txt'

# open the file for writing
fout = open( filename, 'w' )
# write text to file
fout.write(mytext)
# close the file
fout.close()

# read it back in to check if it has been written properly ...
fin = open(filename, 'r')
text = fin.read()
fin.close()

print '-'*70
print text
print '-'*70

[eleonora]

Thank you very much!!