Partially unpacking a sequence

[tkpmep]

I have a list y

y ['20001201', 'ARRO', '04276410', '18.500', '19.500', '18.500',
'19.500', '224']

from which I want to extract only the 2nd and 4th item by partially
unpacking the list. So I trieda,b = y[2,4] Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<interacti ve input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: list indices must be integers

Out of curiosity, I trieda,b = y[2:4]
a '04276410' b

'18.500'

Why does this work (to a point - it gives me items 2 and 3, not 2 and
4 as I require) and not my first attempt? What is the right syntax to
use when partially upacking a sequence?

Thanks in advance

Thomas Philips

[Paul McGuire]

<tk****@hotmail .com> wrote in message
news:11******** **************@ z34g2000cwc.goo glegroups.com.. .

I have a list y

y ['20001201', 'ARRO', '04276410', '18.500', '19.500', '18.500',
'19.500', '224']

from which I want to extract only the 2nd and 4th item by partially
unpacking the list. So I trieda,b = y[2,4] Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<interacti ve input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: list indices must be integers

Out of curiosity, I trieda,b = y[2:4]
a '04276410' b

'18.500'

Why does this work (to a point - it gives me items 2 and 3, not 2 and
4 as I require) and not my first attempt? What is the right syntax to
use when partially upacking a sequence?

Thanks in advance

Thomas Philips

a,b = y[2],y[4]

or

a,b = y[2:5:2]

or

a,b = ( y[i] for i in (2,4) )
-- Paul

[Fredrik Lundh]

tk****@hotmail. com wrote:

I have a list y

y ['20001201', 'ARRO', '04276410', '18.500', '19.500', '18.500',
'19.500', '224']

from which I want to extract only the 2nd and 4th item by partially
unpacking the list. So I trieda,b = y[2,4] Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<interacti ve input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: list indices must be integers

Out of curiosity, I trieda,b = y[2:4]
a '04276410' b

'18.500'

Why does this work (to a point - it gives me items 2 and 3, not 2 and
4 as I require) and not my first attempt? What is the right syntax to
use when partially upacking a sequence?

if you want two items, fetch two items:

a = y[2]
b = y[4]

y[2:4] is a 2-item slice starting at index 2 and ending *before* index 4.
see the documentation for more on slicing.

</F>

[Paul McGuire]

"Paul McGuire" <pt***@austin.r r._bogus_.com> wrote in message
news:Fk******** *********@torna do.texas.rr.com ...

<tk****@hotmail .com> wrote in message
news:11******** **************@ z34g2000cwc.goo glegroups.com.. .

I have a list y

>>y

['20001201', 'ARRO', '04276410', '18.500', '19.500', '18.500',
'19.500', '224']

from which I want to extract only the 2nd and 4th item by partially
unpacking the list. So I tried

>>a,b = y[2,4]

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<interacti ve input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: list indices must be integers

Out of curiosity, I tried

>>a,b = y[2:4]
>>a

'04276410'

>> b

'18.500'

Why does this work (to a point - it gives me items 2 and 3, not 2 and
4 as I require) and not my first attempt? What is the right syntax to
use when partially upacking a sequence?

Thanks in advance

Thomas Philips

a,b = y[2],y[4]

or

a,b = y[2:5:2]

or

a,b = ( y[i] for i in (2,4) )
-- Paul

Forgot one:

_,_,a,_,b,_,_,_ = y

There actually is some merit to this form. If the structure of y changes
sometime in the future (specifically if a field is added or removed), this
statement will fail noisily, calling your attention to this change. But if
a new field is added, say at the front of the list, the previous methods
will all silently succeed, but now giving you the values formerly known as
y[1] and y[3].

-- Paul

[tkpmep]

Thank you, everyone, for resolving my question. At one point, while
trying to solve the problem, I typed

y[1,3]

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<interacti ve input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: list indices must be integers

The error message gave me no clue as to what I was doing wrong (in my
mind, I was just writing out the elements of a range), and I thought
perhaps that my inclusion of a comma was the problem. Perhaps a more
explicit error message would have helped.

Another solution, I suppose, is to use a list comprehension. Store the
indices in a list x. For example, let x = [1,5,4]. Then

a,b,c = [y[i] for i in x]

Thanks

Thomas Philips

[Fredrik Lundh]

Paul McGuire wrote:

Forgot one:

_,_,a,_,b,_,_,_ = y

There actually is some merit to this form. If the structure of y changes
sometime in the future (specifically if a field is added or removed), this
statement will fail noisily, calling your attention to this change. But if
a new field is added, say at the front of the list, the previous methods
will all silently succeed, but now giving you the values formerly known as
y[1] and y[3].

if this is likely to happen, an straightforward assert is a lot easier to parse than
a one-two-a-three-oops-one-two-a-four-five-etc number of underscores:

assert len(y) == 8
a = y[2]
b = y[4]

</F>

[Sybren Stuvel]

tk****@hotmail. com enlightened us with:

y[1,3]

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<interacti ve input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: list indices must be integers

The error message gave me no clue as to what I was doing wrong (in
my mind, I was just writing out the elements of a range), and I
thought perhaps that my inclusion of a comma was the problem.

You thought correct. List indices must be integers, not tuples.
Perhaps a more explicit error message would have helped.

Why? You thought the right thing.

Sybren
--
The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a
capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the
safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
Frank Zappa

[jUrner]

>> Thank you, everyone, for resolving my question. At one point, while

trying to solve the problem, I typed

> y[1,3]

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<interacti ve input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: list indices must be integers

The error message gave me no clue as to what I was doing wrong (in my
mind, I was just writing out the elements of a range), and I thought
perhaps that my inclusion of a comma was the problem. Perhaps a more
explicit error message would have helped.

The error message is correct because in y[1, 3] "1, 3" is recognized by
the interpreter
as tuple. Python goodie or snakebite that is...

[Fredrik Lundh]

tk****@hotmail. com wrote:

Thank you, everyone, for resolving my question. At one point, while
trying to solve the problem, I typed

y[1,3]

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<interacti ve input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: list indices must be integers

The error message gave me no clue as to what I was doing wrong (in my
mind, I was just writing out the elements of a range), and I thought
perhaps that my inclusion of a comma was the problem. Perhaps a more
explicit error message would have helped.

the problem is that the *compiler* doesn't know what "y" is, and y[1,3]
is a perfectly valid way to access e.g. a dictionary or a multidimensiona l
array. so it's the list implementation that has to do the complaining, and
all it knows is that it wants an integer index, and got something else.

maybe something like

TypeError: list indices must be integers (got tuple)

would have been less confusing; feel free to add a suggestion to the bug
tracker:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?grou...70&atid=105470

</F>

[bruno at modulix]

tk****@hotmail. com wrote:

I have a list y

y
['20001201', 'ARRO', '04276410', '18.500', '19.500', '18.500',
'19.500', '224']

from which I want to extract only the 2nd and 4th item

by partially
unpacking the list. So I tried
a,b = y[2,4]

Mmm, so lovely and meaningful names !-)

FWIW, and since nobody seemed to mention it, list indexes are
zero-based, so the second element of a list is at index 1 and the fourth
at index 3.

Also, a GoodPractice(tm ) is to use named constants instead of magic
numbers. Here we don't have a clue about why these 2 elements are so
specials. Looking at the example list (which - semantically - should be
a tuple, not a list) I could wild-guess that the 2nd item is a reference
and the fourth a price, so:

REF_INDEX = 1 # lists are zero-based
PRICE_INDEX = 3

ref, price = y[REF_INDEX], y[PRICE_INDEX]

And finally, since this list is clearly structured data, wrapping it
into an object to hide away implementation details *may* help -
depending on the context, of course !-)
--
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in 'o****@xiludom. gro'.split('@')])"