[Tutor] Question about list

[Matthew White]

Hi Hoffman,

It is often useful to use the "for" construct to process items in a list.
e.g.:

>>> list1 =  [ 'spam!', 2, ['Ted', 'Rock']]
>>> for item in list:
...    print item
spam!
2
['Ted', 'Rock']

If you pass a list to the len() function, it will return the number of
elenents in the list. e.g.:

>>> x = ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> len(x)
3

Now if you pass len() a string it will return the length of a string:
>>> y = 'hello'
>>> len(y)
5

Given your list below, len() will return what you're looking for when it
encounters the third element of the list, but won't for the first and
second elements.  One way to solve this problem is to use the type()
function to figure out if your item is a string or list and use len()
as appropriate.  I hope this provides enough of a hint.

-mtw


On Mon, Apr 10, 2006 at 03:29:23PM -0700, Hoffmann (oasf2004 at yahoo.com) wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have a list: list1 =  [ 'spam!', 2, ['Ted', 'Rock']
> ]
> and I wrote the script below:
> 
> i = 0
> while i < len(list1):
>     print list1[i]
>     i += 1
> 
> Ok. This script will generate as the output each
> element of the original list, one per line:
> 
> spam!
> 2
> ['Ted', 'Rock']
> 
> I also would like to print the length of each element
> of that list:
> 
> spam! = 1 element
> 2 = 1 element
> ['Ted', 'Rock'] = 2 elements
> 
> Could anyone, please, give me some hints?
> Thanks,
> Hoffmann
>     
> 
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