Lorn wrote: > I'm trying to figure out a way to create dynamic lists or possibly > antother solution for the following problem. I have multiple lines in a > text file (every line is the same format) that are iterated over and > which need to be compared to previous lines in the file in order to > perform some simple math. Each line contains 3 fileds: a descriptor and > two integers. Here is an example: > > rose, 1, 500 > lilac, 1, 300 > lilly, 1, 400 > rose, 0, 100
Do you have to maintain a list or just the current value? Also I did not find it clear why you have to compare with previous line? Anyway, I think dictionnary may be useful there: >>> input = """rose, 1, 500 ... lilac, 1, 300 ... lilly, 1, 400 ... rose, 0, 100""" >>> >>> entries = [l.split(',') for l in input.split('\n')] >>> >>> d = {} >>> for k, op, n in entries: ... if int(op) == 1: ... d[k] = d.get(k, 0) + int(n) ... else: ... d[k] = d.get(k, 0) - int(n) ... >>> print d {'rose': 400, 'lilly': 400, 'lilac': 300} >>> That may not be what you want but there may be some things for you to use. And you can of course keep the full list of operation in d. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list