iterating in reverse

[Steve Holden]

"Paul Rubin" <phr-n2003b at NOSPAMnightsong.com> wrote in message
news:7xznpzv93c.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com...
> Nick Vargish <nav at adams.patriot.net> writes:
> > I just encountered a problem that required reverse iterating to solve,
> > and my current solution, though it works, is not so satisfying:
> >
> > def commafy(val):
> >     """Return val as string with commas every thousandth place.""" ...
>
> If you're just looking for a practical solution, use the locale package,
> which does this formatting for you.

That's no fun.

Here's my own non-reversing solution. Again, it would need tweaking for
negative numbers to avoid results like "-,123".

    def commafy(val):
        val = str(val)
        if len(val) < 4:
         return val
        chunk = [3, 1, 2]
        out = []
        while val:
            n = chunk[len(val) % 3]
            out.append(val[:n])
            val = val[n:]
        return ",".join(out)

    for i in [1, 12, 123, 1234, 12345, 123456, 1234567, 12345678]:
        print i, ":", commafy(i)

I've even tested it.

regards
--
Steve Holden                                  http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming                 http://pydish.holdenweb.com/pwp/
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