[Tutor] Looking at a String as a Struct?

[Kent Johnson]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 6:58 AM, Wayne Watson
<sierra_mtnview at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Is it possible in Python to look at a string as a "struct". I don't think a
> struct exists in python. Actually, is there something analogous to a record.
> In the case of strings, suppose I have string that is composed of
> sub-strings like, first_name, last-name, date_of birth, which consists of
> month, day, and year, and finally SSN, street_address, state, city, and
> zip_code. I'd like to access these fields directly instead of lastname =
> record[38:55]. What if fields are not just strings, but some numeric values?

For numeric fields, just convert as needed:
quantity = int(record[55:60])
price = float(record[60::70])

If the numbers are binary, rather than ascii, see the struct module.

Kent