Dr. Phillip M. Feldman a écrit :
Bruno- You've made some excellent suggestions, and I'm always grateful for
the opportunity to learn.

Glad to know I've been of any help !-)

 My revised code appears below.  Philllip

def strip_pairs(s, open='([{\'"', close=')]}\'"'):
   """
   OVERVIEW

   This function strips matching pairs of characters from the beginning and
   end of the input string `s`.  If `s` begins with a character in `open`
and
   ends with the corresponding character in `close` (see below), both are
   removed from the string. This process continues until no further matching
   pairs can be removed.

   INPUTS

   `open` and `close`: These arguments, which must be equal-length strings,
   specify matching start-of-scope and end-of-scope characters.  The same
   character may appear in both `open` and `close`; single and double quotes
   conventionally match themselves.  By default, `open` contains a left
   parenthesis, left square bracket, left curly bracket, single quote, and
   double quote), and `close` contains the corresponding characters."""

   if not isinstance(s,(str,unicode)):
      raise TypeError, '`s` must be a string (str or unicode).'

Might be a bit more helpful (for the programmer using your function) to specify what 's' actually is. Also, the recommanded way to raise exceptions is to use the 'call' syntax, ie:


if not isinstance(s,(str,unicode)):
   raise TypeError("'s' must be a str or unicode, got '%s'" % type(s))


   if not isinstance(open,(str,unicode)) or not
isinstance(close,(str,unicode)):
      raise TypeError, '`open` and `close` must be strings (str or
unicode).'

Mmmm.... I still wonder why you wouldn't accept a tuple or list of chars here.

   if len(open) != len(close): raise ValueError, \
     '\'open\' and \'close\' arguments must be equal-length strings.'

   while len(s) >= 2:

      # Check whether first character of `s` is in `open`:
      i= open.find(s[0])

      # If `s` does not begin with a character from `open`, there are no
more
      # pairs to be stripped:
      if i == -1: break

wrt/ readability, it might be better to put the break statement on it's own line - but you can probably count this one as more of a personnal preference than a guideline !-)

      # If `s` does not begin and end with matching characters, there are no
      # more pairs to be stripped:
      if s[-1] != close[i]: break

      # Strip the first and last character from `s`:
      s= s[1:-1]
   return s




Steven (D'Aprano) posted a possibly interesting implementation. Might be worth timeit'ing both.


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