string manipulation question

[Oliver Fromme]

AT&T News <wavy_gravy at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
 > I have a string (line) that might contain, for example *any* *one* of the
 > patterns or words "whale" , "cat".
 > How do I elegantly set a variable say "animal" depending upon what word is
 > there. I.e I want
 > animal = "MAMMAL" if line contains the word "whale"
 > or
 > animal = "FELINE" if line contains the word "cat".
 > 
 > is there a elegant way to code the above construct, I have 10 of these
 > patterns/keywords that can be found in a line. I thought of using a
 > dictionary for the keyword patterns, but the pattern/keyword does not have
 > any known context in the line.

Don't know if this is what you want, but it seems to match
your description, and I think it's fairly "elegant" ...

>>> words = {"whale": "MAMMAL", "cat": "FELINE"}
>>> def find_animal(line):
...     return filter(lambda (key, val): key in line.split(), words.items())[0][1]
... 
>>> find_animal("My cat has white feet.")
'FELINE'
>>> find_animal("There's a whale in my bath tube.")
'MAMMAL'

You'll probably want to split that long line somehow, and
also catch IndexError exceptions (which are raised if none
of the words occur in the line).

Regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Oettingenstr. 2, 80538 München
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