String manipulation questions

[goldtech]

Hi,

Replacing strings in a text (likely an XML) file. Some newbie
questions...

....
while line:
counter=counter+1
if line.find(newstring) != -1:
print 'match at line'+str(counter)
newline = line.replace(oldstring, newstring)
fileOUT.write(newline)
line=fileIN.readline()
.....

Question1: The replace method - If a string does not have the target
replacement "newstring", then newline equals oldstring? Ie. oldstring
is not changed in any way? Seems to be what I observe but just want to
confirm this.

Question2: I'm using "line.find(newstring) != -1..." because I want
to print when a replacement happens. Does "line.replace..." report
indirectly somehow when it replaces?
Thanks

P.S. I know I should be using XSLT to transform XML - but the above
seems to work for small text changes.

[Duncan Booth]

goldtech <go******@worldpost.comwrote:

Question1: The replace method - If a string does not have the target
replacement "newstring", then newline equals oldstring? Ie. oldstring
is not changed in any way? Seems to be what I observe but just want to
confirm this.

Yes.

>
Question2: I'm using "line.find(newstring) != -1..." because I want
to print when a replacement happens. Does "line.replace..." report
indirectly somehow when it replaces?

Just do the line.replace() and then test for a change.

Question 3 (which I'm sure you meant to ask really) ...
No, you shouldn't be using a while loop here. Use a for loop and the
enumerate builtin:

for counter, line in enumerate(fileIN):
newline = line.replace(oldstring, newstring)
if newline != line:
print 'match at line', counter+1
fileOUT.write(newline)

[goldtech]

snip...

>
for counter, line in enumerate(fileIN):
newline = line.replace(oldstring, newstring)
if newline != line:
print 'match at line', counter+1
fileOUT.write(newline)

"enumerate" - haven't seen that before. Nice!

Thanks