It's ...

[Angus Rodgers]

On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:22:48 +0100, MRAB 
<python at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:

>Angus Rodgers wrote:
>> On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:31:47 -0500, Kirk Strauser 
>> <kirk at daycos.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> At 2009-06-24T19:53:49Z, Angus Rodgers <twirlip at bigfoot.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> print ''.join(map(detab, f.xreadlines()))
>>> An equivalent in modern Pythons:
>>>
>>>>>> print ''.join(line.expandtabs(3) for line in file('h071.txt'))
>> 
>> I guess the code below would also have worked in 2.1?
>> (It does in 2.5.4.)
>> 
>>  print ''.join(line.expandtabs(3) for line in \
>>  file('h071.txt').xreadlines())
>> 
>That uses a generator expression, which was introduced in 2.4.

Sorry, I forgot that list comprehensions need square brackets.

The following code works in 2.1 (I installed version 2.1.3, on
a different machine, to check!):

 f = open('h071.txt')   # Can't use file('h071.txt') in 2.1
 print ''.join([line.expandtabs(3) for line in f.xreadlines()])

(Of course, in practice I'll stick to doing it the more sensible
way that's already been explained to me.  I'm ordering a copy of
Wesley Chun, /Core Python Programming/ (2nd ed., 2006), to learn
about version 2.5.)
-- 
Angus Rodgers