Parsing a string

[oaktrees]

This should be simple, but I think I am missing up the syntax. I am trying to make a list of the letters that appear in a string.

import string
values=[]
values[5]="12234.7B"
holder=[]
holder.append(values[5].letters)

This code gives me an error on the letters function. Any idea why?

Many thanks.

[TrustyTony]

Print is debuggers best friend

import string
values=['']*6
values[5]="12234.7B"
holder=[]
print string.letters
print values
print values[5].letters
holder.append(values[5].letters)

[oaktrees]

Tonyjv,

Can you tell me how the code, values=*6, is different from just values=[]?

Thanks again.

[griswolf]

The array [] has no elements. You can append to it, but you cannot insert an item at index 5 by assigning as you did. The array ['']*6 has the empty string at each index from 0 through 5 inclusive.

If you are trying to make a list of the characters in a given string, you should probably use list comprehension:

theList = [x for x in 'my string']

[oaktrees]

I fear I have a problem with my python complier then? I am using 2.6.5. When I type in the code above, specifically,

import string
values=['']*6
values[5]="12234.7B"
holder=[]
holder.append(values[5].letters)

Python gives me an error. It says,

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Users/Home/untitled", line 5, in <module>
holder.append(values[5].letters)
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'letters'

Does this make sense?

Thanks.

[TrustyTony]

It is not bug this is how it is. letters is method of string module not string object property. It produces the letters available:
See:
http://docs.python.org/library/string.html

What you want to accomplish with your statement?

[oaktrees]

Tony,

I must have misunderstood the documentation on what letters does. I had hoped to strip off the last letter (which will be either M or B) from a string of numbers and append that letter in a list. So for example,

"25167537.89B" or "123.0M"

I would want to know the first string is 25167537.89 billions and the second is 123.0 millions.

[TrustyTony]

If you are sure it is always there you can do:

for numstr in ["25167537.89B" , "123.0M"]:
    print [numstr[:-1],numstr[-1]]

[oaktrees]

Thanks again Tony. So just to conclude, for any other beginners who might want to follow this one day, if I incorporate your logic, the final code will be:

holder=[]
values=["25167537.89B" , "123.0M"]
for x in values:holder.append(x[-1])
print holder

This will save the last characters in the holder list.