MTD wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm wondering if there's a quick way of resolving this problem.
>
> In a program, I have a list of tuples of form (str,int), where int is a
> count of how often str occurs
>
> e.g. L = [ ("X",1),("Y",2)] would mean "X" occurs once and "Y" occurs
> twice
>
> If I am given a string, I want to search L to see if it occurs already.
> If it does, I find the corresponding tuple and increment the integer
> part. If not, I append the new element with int = 1.
>
> e.g.
>
> algorithm(L, "X") would produce output L = [("X",2),("Y",2)]
> algorithm(L,"Z") would produce L = [("X",1),("Y",2),("Z",1)]
>
> I tried to create an algorithm of the following form:
>
>>>>def algorith(list,str):
>
> ... flag = True
> ... for l in list:
> ... if l[0] == str:
> ... l[1] += 1
> ... flag = False
> ... if flag:
> ... list.append((str,1))
> ...
>
>
> But:
>
>
>>>>algorith(L,"X")
>
>
> gives:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
> File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
> File "<interactive input>", line 5, in algorith
> TypeError: object does not support item assignment
>
>
> So clearly that doesn't work... any ideas?
>
[Nit: try not to use built-in names like "list" and "str" for your own
purposes, as it stops you from using the bult-ins].
There are many ways you could do this more efficiently. The most
efficient solution doesn't use a list at all, but a dictionary (the
following code is untested):
def algorith(d, s):
if s in d:
d[s] += 1
else:
d[s] = 1
regards
Steve
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