[Tutor] a quick Q: what does the "collapse" mean?

[Joel Goldstick]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Joel Goldstick <joel.goldstick at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 4:16 PM, lina <lina.lastname at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 9:59 PM, Alan Gauld <alan.gauld at btinternet.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > On 08/09/11 14:02, lina wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Hi,
>>> >>
>>> >> I failed to understand the "collpase" meaning in a string.
>>> >>
>>> >> can someone give me a simple example?
>>> >
>>> > Can you give us some context?
>>> > Its not a method of a string object so far as I can tell?
>>> > Where did you read about it?
>>>
>>> >From "dive into python",
>>>
>>> http://diveintopython.org/
>>>
>>> one example:
>>>
>>> def info(object, spacing=10, collapse=1):
>>>    """Print methods and docs strings.
>>>
>>>    Take modules, class, list, dictionary, or strong."""
>>>    methodList = [e for e in dir(object) if callable(getattr(object, e))]
>>>    processFunc = collapse and (lambda s: " ".join(s.split())) or (lambda
>>> s: s)
>>>    print "\n".join(["%s %s" %
>>>                    (method.ljust(spacing),
>>>                    processFunc(str(getattr(object, method).__doc__)))
>>>                    for method in methodList])
>>>
>>> if __name__ == "__main__":
>>>    print info.__doc__
>>>
>>> I felt so hard to understand the collapse,
>>>
>>> Please don't discourage me telling me it's an old book,
>>> To me I started reading till 42 pages. let me finish it.
>>>
>>> I used to study python on and off,
>>> sometimes give a whole week, but due to not using it,
>>> so
>>> it's frustrating that when I really needed it, I barely could complete
>>> one.
>>>
>>
>> Reading this, it seems that 'collapse' is a variable defined somewhere
>> else in the code.
>>
>> --
>> André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
>>
>>
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>> collapse is a function that Mark must have described earlier in the
> chapter you are working on.  Are you using the online version? which chapter
>
> I spoke too soon.  collapse is a boolean variable that you set if you want
> to have the code in the lamda function collapse the text.  If it is False
> then the statement returns false instead of whatever is going on in the
> Lambda
>


-- 
Joel Goldstick
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