[Tutor] Re: counting space-delimited strings within a sequence

[Andrei]

Vicki Stanfield wrote on Fri, 2 Apr 2004 16:33:28 -0500 (EST):

> This is probably a very simple question, but I am not sure of the best way
> to handle it. I am attempting to determine the number of parameters that
> are passed into my function. 

<snip>

Wouldn't it be easier to pass real parameters instead of a string
containing parameters separated by spaces? Something like this works very
well if you don't know in advance how many arguments you will have:

>>> def myfunc(*args):
...     for arg in args:
...         print arg
...     
>>> myfunc('a', 'b', 3)
a
b
3
>>> myfunc(1)
1

> There might be none. I wrote the following:
> 
>         i=0
>         args = parameters.split(" ")

You don't need to specify ' ' as argument for split(), because split()
without arguments by default splits at whitespaces.

>         for count in args:
>             i+=1

In order to determine the length of an array, you can use the len()
function, which is a lot easier than looping over an array and increasing a
counter:

   self.numparams = len(args)

By the way, this code works just fine with the "*args" trick I mentioned
above.

> but if there are no parameters, self.numparams is still set to 1 instead
> of 0. I don't understand, but when I run this in idle, I get the same
> result. How do I split up a string of words which are space-delimited and
> handle the empty string as well?  And yes, I'm sure that I'm just missing
> some fundamental Pythonism.

Leave out the parameter you pass to split:

>>> ''.split(' ')
[''] # 1 parameter (being an empty string)
>>> ''.split()
[] # no paramaters

-- 
Yours,

Andrei

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