XLRD: Parsing info from a column

[waldopat]

Hi all,

I have an excel doc that has some information about various countries and I want to get a list of all the countries, which is in Column A. But, when I try to iterate over column A, I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python24\Lib\site-packages\pythonwin\pywin\framework\scriptutils.py", line 310, in RunScript
    exec codeObject in __main__.__dict__
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\PW\My Documents\Python\excel\read_matrix_clean.py", line 18, in ?
    if countries[n]==countries[n+1]:
IndexError: list index out of range
 

I don't quite understand, because if I try

print countries[n]
print countries[n+1]
print countries[n+2]

etc...it prints all the correct information.

Thanks for any help!
Patrick

Here's the code:

import xlrd
 
path_file = "c:\\data.xls"
book = xlrd.open_workbook(path_file)
Counts = book.sheet_by_index(1)
countries= Counts.col_values(0,start_rowx=1, end_rowx=None)
 
n = 0
x = len(countries)
print x
 
while n<x:
    if countries[n]==countries[n+1]:
        del countries[n+1]
    else:
        n = n+1
print countries

[dazzler]

x = len(countries)
while n<x:
if countries[n]==countries[n+1]:
n +=1

if for example list lenght is 10 , last item in list is list[9] (and first is list[0])

if your countries lenght is 100, and last time when you are in a loop it tries "if counries[99] == counties[100]: (and there's error because last item in your list is countries[99] not [100] )

my brain's not working so well right now (been coding 10hours now), but hopefully that was the error in your code ;D

[bvdet]

while n<x:
if countries[n]==countries[n+1]:
del countries[n+1]
else:
n = n+1
print countries

Your problem is in your loop. When you delete an item from your list, the length of the list changes but the variable 'x' does not. Try something like this:

>>> countries = ['A', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'C', 'D', 'D', 'D', 'E']
>>> unique_countries = []
>>> for country in countries:
...     if country not in unique_countries:
...         unique_countries.append(country)
...         
>>> unique_countries
['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']
>>> 

[waldopat]

Great! That was it. For some reason I was thinking too hard about it. if not in was exactly what I should have done!

Thanks a lot

Your problem is in your loop. When you delete an item from your list, the length of the list changes but the variable 'x' does not. Try something like this:

>>> countries = ['A', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'C', 'D', 'D', 'D', 'E']
>>> unique_countries = []
>>> for country in countries:
...     if country not in unique_countries:
...         unique_countries.append(country)
...         
>>> unique_countries
['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']
>>>