On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:10:54 -0700, Scott David Daniels <scott.dani...@acm.org> wrote:
>Angus Rodgers wrote: > >> from types import StringType # Is this awkwardness necessary? >Nope I'm starting to see some of the mental haze that was confusing me. >Also, expandtabs is an instance method, so the roundabout is not needed. > > def detab(s): > return s.expandtabs(stop) I'd forgotten where Beazley had explained that "methods such as ... s.expandtabs() always return a new string as opposed to mod- ifying the string s." I must have been hazily thinking of it as somehow modifying s, even though my awkward code itself depended on a vague understanding that it didn't. No point in nailing this polly to the perch any more! >I'd simply use: > for line in f: > print detab(line.rstrip()) >or even: > for line in f: > print line.rstrip().expandtabs(stop) I'll read up on iterating through files, somewhere online for the moment, and then get a more up-to-date textbook. And I'll try not too ask too many silly questions like this, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting into any bad programming habits right at the start - and it's a good thing I did, because I was! >Nope. But you could use a generator expression if you wanted: > g.writelines(detab(line) for line in f) Ah, so that actually does what I was fondly hoping my code would do. Thanks! I must learn about these "generator" thingies. -- Angus Rodgers -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
