I'm fairly new to programming and Python as well, but I have a suggestion that may be worth looking into-- are you familiar with pickling? It sounds like something that may fit in well with what you're trying to do.
Good reference article: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1052190.html On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 5:19 PM, Siren Saren <sire...@yahoo.com> wrote: > I'm still fairly new to programming. Python is my first language and I am > teaching myself as best I can. I'm struggling with a situation that I > expect must come up all the time. I can come up with relatively complicated > solutions but I wonder if there's not a more pythonic way of doing it. > > I've seen a lot of examples in books for dealing with lists of alternating > data types, but what about a list that doesn't follow a simple numeric > pattern? For example, say I have a list that's a composite of two elements: > books and key pages / albums and favorite tracks / medicines and times > taken, whatever. To make a program that does something to the first set of > elements based on the second set of elements, what kind of structure should > I set up? > > Probably easier to choose one of these. So pretend I have a list like > this: > > (Crime and punishment, page 10, page 40, page 30, Brother's Karamazov, page > 22, page 55, page 9000, Father's and Sons, page 100, Anna Karenina, page 1, > page 2, page 4, page 7, page 9) > > Since I can identify the elements and since I know the values are 'in > order,' in other words the page numbers between the first and second book > all belong to the first book, I can make a mapping. But I've been surprised > at the complexity. So in this hypothetical, with a regular expression, I > can easily convert the pages to integers, and identify the two lists. But > what's the right way to map them to each other, if I am planning to, for > example, tear out these key pages and make a wall hanging. (I would never > do this with precious books like these, of course). Am I right to think > that I want to get them into a form that clearly relates them to each other > from the outset? Does a dictionary make sense-- I've read that I should > expect to put a lot of my data into dictionaries? > > My tentative approach has been as follows: > > a. Make a sublist of the Books. Here we could just get the non-integers so > Books = ('C and P', 'Brothers K' ...) > b. Look each up book in the main list to get an index values > c. Now my approach becomes ugly. In pseudo code- > > For book in Books: > A dictionary should map the book to a list of all the elements in the > main list that fall between the book's index value and the next book's index > value > > I keep coming up with embedded loops to express this but I simultaneously > feel like I am missing a third layer (somehow maybe it's 'for book,' 'for > index,' 'for element'?) and like Occham is going to come by with his razor > and laugh at me and say, "oh there's a function that does this called the > "one to many mapping function." > > I think I'm reading the right books and going to the right web pages and > such to learn, but in this case, I must have just not comprehended. Would > be grateful for any input. Have enjoyed reading the archives of this group > as I've been trying to get my head around programming. Thanks again > > Soren > >
_______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
