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up vote 1 down vote favorite

Background

  • Python (version 2.7.2)

Problem

  • You want to specify an array in your code.
  • You want to use the 'syntax sugar' available in Ruby and Perl.
  • You are a fanatic about readable code but also saving keystrokes.

Solution

  • Python Triple-quoted string
  • Python splitlines
  • Python list comprehension

Pitfalls

  • The solution may look ugly or un-Python-ish

Question

Are there any refactorings, suggestions or comments on this approach?

### ********************
## setup an array using append
ary_names = []
ary_names.append('alpha')
ary_names.append('bravo')
ary_names.append('charlie')
ary_names.append('delta')
ary_names.append('echo')

### ********************
## setup an array using triple-quoted string
ary_names = [
  item.strip() for item in  
  """

  alpha
  bravo
  charlie
  delta
  echo

  """
  .splitlines()
  if(not item.strip()=='')
]

"""
Here is a ruby example for comparison

ary_names = %w[
  alpha
  bravo
  charlie
  delta
  echo      
]
"""
share|improve this question

2 Answers 2

up vote 5 down vote accepted

If you call split with no arguments, it will split on any whitespace and drop any empty elements. Knowing that, it's as simple as this:

ary_names = """
    alpha
    bravo
    charlie
    delta
    echo
""".split()

If you have only five short elements, you may want to put them all on one line:

ary_names = 'alpha bravo charlie delta echo'.split()

Of course, you'd only want to do that if it fits easily on one line.

share|improve this answer
3  
its worth noting this won't worth string tokens including multiple words, unlike OP's answerr –  theodox Sep 6 '13 at 15:28
up vote 3 down vote

This will work as written. You could shorten it slightly by replacing 

if(not item.strip()=='')

with 

 if item.strip()

You're also calling strip twice, you could skip that with:

array_names = [i for i in map(str.strip, my_big_string.splitlines()) if i]

I would avoid inlining the actual constants in the list comprehension tool - that's bad for readability if it's not sitting on the outermost outline level.

On the philosophical level, I'm ambivalent. I hate all the quotes etc too, but this only works for strings, so it's not a general purpose idiom. You could extend it with exec or eval to get non-string values, but that's a whole big can o' worms :)

share|improve this answer
2  
strip isn't a top-level function; you'd have to use str.strip or lambda s: s.strip() if you want to pass it to map. –  icktoofay Sep 6 '13 at 5:51

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