Ruby: iterate subarray and count items; write back count into element - ruby

I have an XML-File with <pb n="4-DIGIT-NUMBER" ... />. The number being in some cases identical, so I'd like to disambiguate, coming so far, but now problems with counting (do I have the right approach? => 3))
1) Reading the all numbers into an Array, yielding a very long list with:
Dir.chdir("./Tustep/luxneu")
sammel = []
open("lp42tags.txt").each do |x|
if x =~ /<pb n="(\d\d\d\d)/
sammel << $1
end
end
2) Finding the numbers repeating and put them into subarrays
dupl_groups = sammel.select{|i| sammel.grep(i).size > 1}.group_by{|x| x}.values
p dupl_groups
# (much shorter example)=> [["0119", "0119"], ["0147", "0147"], ["0156", "0156", "0156"]]
3) Now I thought I could somehow count the elements of each subarray and put them back into (or into a copy..). I want e.g. [["0119:1", "0119:2"], [...], ["0156:1", "0156:2", "0156:3"], maybe like this (but only got hilarious loops with almost endless number computations... :/)
dupl_counted = []
dupl_groups.each do |outer|
count = 1
dupl_groups do |inner|
#puts inner.inspect
inner_new = inner.to_s.sub(/(.+)/, "\\1:#{count}")
dupl_counted << inner_new
count += count
end
end
Seriously flawed..? Maybe something instead using "each_with_index"? Also I need the groups for counting in meaningful chunks (slice 3 or so is unacceptable, because there are number-repetitions ranging from 2-6). If I could split the array in its subarrays yielding them all as normal arrays, would that be good?
Thanks in advance!
René T.

This should be just a nested application of map - once to the outer group, and then to each element within:
dupl_groups.map do |gp|
gp.map.with_index {|el, ix| el + ":#{ix+1}"}
end
# => [["0119:1", "0119:2"], ["0147:1", "0147:2"], ["0156:1", "0156:2", "0156:3"]]

Related

Optimizing Array Memory Usage

I currently have a very large array of permutations, which is currently using a significant amount of RAM. This is the current code I have which SHOULD:
Count all but the occurrences where more than one '1' exists or three '2's exist in a row.
arr = [*1..3].repeated_permutation(30).to_a;
count = 0
arr.each do |x|
if not x.join('').include? '222' and x.count(1) < 2
count += 1
end
end
print count
So basically this results in a 24,360 element array, each of which have 30 elements.
I've tried to run it through Terminal but it literally ate through 14GB of RAM, and didn't move for 15 minutes, so I'm not sure whether the process froze while attempting to access more RAM or if it was still computing.
My question being: is there a faster way of doing this?
Thanks!
I am not sure what problem you try to solve. If your code is just an example for a more complex problem and you really need to check programatically every single permumation, then you might want to experiment with lazy:
[*1..3].repeated_permutation(30).lazy.each do ||
# your condition
end
Or you might want to make the nested iteratior very explicit:
[1,2,3].each do |x1|
[1,2,3].each do |x2|
[1,2,3].each do |x3|
# ...
[1,2,3].each do |x30|
permutation = [x1,x2,x3, ... , x30]
# your condition
end
end
end
end
end
But it feels wrong to me to solve this kind of problem with Ruby enumerables at all. Let's have a look at your strings:
111111111111111111111111111111
111111111111111111111111111112
111111111111111111111111111113
111111111111111111111111111121
111111111111111111111111111122
111111111111111111111111111123
111111111111111111111111111131
...
333333333333333333333333333323
333333333333333333333333333331
333333333333333333333333333332
333333333333333333333333333333
I suggest to just use enumerative combinatorics. Just look at the patterns and analyse (or count) how often your condition can be true. For example there are 28 indexes in your string at which a 222 substring could be place, only 27 for the 2222 substring... If you place a substring how likely is it that there is no 1 in the other parts of the string?
I think your problem is a mathematics problem, not a programming problem.
NB This is an incomplete answer, but I think the idea might give a push to the proper solution.
I can think of a following approach: let’s represent each permutation as a value in ternary number base, padded by zeroes:
1 = 000..00001
2 = 000..00002
3 = 000..00010
4 = 000..00011
5 = 000..00012
...
Now consider we restated the original task, treating zeroes as ones, ones as twos and twos as threes. So far so good.
The whole list of permutations would be represented by:
(1..3**30-1).map { |e| x = e.to_s(3).rjust(30, '0') }
Now we are to apply your conditions:
def do_calc permutation_count
(1..3**permutation_count-1).inject do |memo, e|
x = e.to_s(3).rjust(permutation_count, '0')
!x.include?('111') && x.count('0') < 2 ? memo + 1 : memo
end
Unfortunately, even for permutation_count == 20 it takes more than 5 minutes to calculate, so probably some additional steps are required. I will be thinking of further optimization. Currently I hope this will give you a hint to find the good approach yourself.

Passing array of integers to loop, modify the array, and store results in new array. Project Euler #8 in Ruby

I'm working through problem 8 on project Euler and have looked through a bunch of resources. Here is the problem:
"#8 - Find the greatest product of five consecutive digits in the 1000-digit number."
I split the 1000-digt number into an array of strings and converted that to an array of integers.
number = "73167176531330624919225119674426574742355349194934
96983520312774506326239578318016984801869478851843
85861560789112949495459501737958331952853208805511
12540698747158523863050715693290963295227443043557
66896648950445244523161731856403098711121722383113
62229893423380308135336276614282806444486645238749
30358907296290491560440772390713810515859307960866
70172427121883998797908792274921901699720888093776
65727333001053367881220235421809751254540594752243
52584907711670556013604839586446706324415722155397
53697817977846174064955149290862569321978468622482
83972241375657056057490261407972968652414535100474
82166370484403199890008895243450658541227588666881
16427171479924442928230863465674813919123162824586
17866458359124566529476545682848912883142607690042
24219022671055626321111109370544217506941658960408
07198403850962455444362981230987879927244284909188
84580156166097919133875499200524063689912560717606
05886116467109405077541002256983155200055935729725
71636269561882670428252483600823257530420752963450"
digits = number.split('').reject!{|i| (i=="\n")}
integer_digits = digits.map {|i| i.to_i}
From here, I want to take the first five values, multiple them, and take the resulting value and add it to a new array named "products". I'm trying to remove the first value of the integer_digit array with the .shift method, start the loop over with the second value of the array, and storing the next product of values [1..5] in the integer_digits array...and so on...
getproduct=1
products=[]
loop do
products << integer_digits[0..4].map {|x| (getproduct*=x) }.max
integer_digits.shift
break if integer_digits.length < 5
end
puts products.max
Once the loop went through all the digits, I hoped that I could display the greatest value using the .max method. The code I have returns an empty array...
My question: How do I keep adding the resulting value of the loop to the product array until there are less than five integer_digit values left? And will the .max method work once this is done?
This line:
products << integer_digits[0..4].map {|x| (getproduct*=x) }.max
makes very little sense. What you need is:
products << integer_digits.first(5).inject(:*)
However you shouldn't store all the results, you only need the biggest one:
max = 0
while integer_digits.length >= 5
product = integer_digits.first(5).inject(:*)
max = product if product > max
integer_digits.shift
end
puts max #=> 40824
UPDATE:
The reason why you are getting an empty string is most likely caused by running the loop twice without regenerating integer_digits array (which has 4 elements after the loop)
Also as suggested by #MarkThomas, you can use each_cons method:
integer_digits.each_cons(5).inject(0) {|max, ary| [max, ary.inject(:*)].max }
This has this advantage that it will not modify integer_digits, so you can run it mutliple times over the same set of digits.

Combine array of array into all possible combinations, forward only, in Ruby

I have an array of arrays, like so:
[['1','2'],['a','b'],['x','y']]
I need to combine those arrays into a string containing all possible combinations of all three sets, forward only. I have seen lots of examples of all possible combinations of the sets in any order, that is not what I want. For example, I do not want any of the elements in the first set to come after the second set, or any in the third set to come before the first, or second, and so on. So, for the above example, the output would be:
['1ax', '1ay', '1bx', '1by', '2ax', '2ay', '2bx', '2by']
The number of arrays, and length of each set is dynamic.
Does anybody know how to solve this in Ruby?
Know your Array#product:
a = [['1','2'],['a','b'],['x','y']]
a.first.product(*a[1..-1]).map(&:join)
Solved using a recursive, so-called "Dynamic Programming" approach:
For n-arrays, combine the entries of the first array with each result on the remaining (n-1) arrays
For a single array, the answer is just that array
In code:
def variations(a)
first = a.first
if a.length==1 then
first
else
rest = variations(a[1..-1])
first.map{ |x| rest.map{ |y| "#{x}#{y}" } }.flatten
end
end
p variations([['1','2'],['a','b'],['x','y']])
#=> ["1ax", "1ay", "1bx", "1by", "2ax", "2ay", "2bx", "2by"]
puts variations([%w[a b],%w[M N],['-'],%w[x y z],%w[0 1 2]]).join(' ')
#=> aM-x0 aM-x1 aM-x2 aM-y0 aM-y1 aM-y2 aM-z0 aM-z1 aM-z2 aN-x0 aN-x1 aN-x2
#=> aN-y0 aN-y1 aN-y2 aN-z0 aN-z1 aN-z2 bM-x0 bM-x1 bM-x2 bM-y0 bM-y1 bM-y2
#=> bM-z0 bM-z1 bM-z2 bN-x0 bN-x1 bN-x2 bN-y0 bN-y1 bN-y2 bN-z0 bN-z1 bN-z2
You could also reverse the logic, and with care you should be able to implement this non-recursively. But the recursive answer is rather straightforward. :)
Pure, reduce with product:
a = [['1','2'],['a','b'],['x','y']]
a.reduce() { |acc, n| acc.product(n).map(&:flatten) }.map(&:join)
# => ["1ax", "1ay", "1bx", "1by", "2ax", "2ay", "2bx", "2by"]

Ruby - return an array in random order

What is the easiest way to return an array in random order in Ruby?
Anything that is nice and short that can be used in an IRB session like
[1,2,3,4,5].random()
# or
random_sort([1,2,3,4,5])
array.shuffle
If you don't have [].shuffle, [].sort_by{rand} works as pointed out by sepp2k. .sort_by temporarily replaces each element by something for the purpose of sorting, in this case, a random number.
[].sort{rand-0.5} however, won't properly shuffle. Some languages (e.g. some Javascript implementations) don't properly shuffle arrays if you do a random sort on the array, with sometimes rather public consequences.
JS Analysis (with graphs!): http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/02/microsoft-random-browser-ballot.html
Ruby is no different! It has the same problem. :)
#sort a bunch of small arrays by rand-0.5
a=[]
100000.times{a << [0,1,2,3,4].sort{rand-0.5}}
#count how many times each number occurs in each position
b=[]
a.each do |x|
x.each_index do |i|
b[i] ||=[]
b[i][x[i]] ||= 0
b[i][x[i]] += 1
end
end
p b
=>
[[22336, 18872, 14814, 21645, 22333],
[17827, 25005, 20418, 18932, 17818],
[19665, 15726, 29575, 15522, 19512],
[18075, 18785, 20283, 24931, 17926],
[22097, 21612, 14910, 18970, 22411]]
Each element should occur in each position about 20000 times. [].sort_by(rand) gives much better results.
#sort with elements first mapped to random numbers
a=[]
100000.times{a << [0,1,2,3,4].sort_by{rand}}
#count how many times each number occurs in each position
...
=>
[[19913, 20074, 20148, 19974, 19891],
[19975, 19918, 20024, 20030, 20053],
[20028, 20061, 19914, 20088, 19909],
[20099, 19882, 19871, 19965, 20183],
[19985, 20065, 20043, 19943, 19964]]
Similarly for [].shuffle (which is probably fastest)
[[20011, 19881, 20222, 19961, 19925],
[19966, 20199, 20015, 19880, 19940],
[20062, 19894, 20065, 19965, 20014],
[19970, 20064, 19851, 20043, 20072],
[19991, 19962, 19847, 20151, 20049]]
What about this?
Helper methods for Enumerable, Array, Hash, and String
that let you pick a random item or shuffle the order of items.
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/rand/

What is the pythonic way to detect the last element in a 'for' loop?

How can I treat the last element of the input specially, when iterating with a for loop? In particular, if there is code that should only occur "between" elements (and not "after" the last one), how can I structure the code?
Currently, I write code like so:
for i, data in enumerate(data_list):
code_that_is_done_for_every_element
if i != len(data_list) - 1:
code_that_is_done_between_elements
How can I simplify or improve this?
Most of the times it is easier (and cheaper) to make the first iteration the special case instead of the last one:
first = True
for data in data_list:
if first:
first = False
else:
between_items()
item()
This will work for any iterable, even for those that have no len():
file = open('/path/to/file')
for line in file:
process_line(line)
# No way of telling if this is the last line!
Apart from that, I don't think there is a generally superior solution as it depends on what you are trying to do. For example, if you are building a string from a list, it's naturally better to use str.join() than using a for loop “with special case”.
Using the same principle but more compact:
for i, line in enumerate(data_list):
if i > 0:
between_items()
item()
Looks familiar, doesn't it? :)
For #ofko, and others who really need to find out if the current value of an iterable without len() is the last one, you will need to look ahead:
def lookahead(iterable):
"""Pass through all values from the given iterable, augmented by the
information if there are more values to come after the current one
(True), or if it is the last value (False).
"""
# Get an iterator and pull the first value.
it = iter(iterable)
last = next(it)
# Run the iterator to exhaustion (starting from the second value).
for val in it:
# Report the *previous* value (more to come).
yield last, True
last = val
# Report the last value.
yield last, False
Then you can use it like this:
>>> for i, has_more in lookahead(range(3)):
... print(i, has_more)
0 True
1 True
2 False
Although that question is pretty old, I came here via google and I found a quite simple way: List slicing. Let's say you want to put an '&' between all list entries.
s = ""
l = [1, 2, 3]
for i in l[:-1]:
s = s + str(i) + ' & '
s = s + str(l[-1])
This returns '1 & 2 & 3'.
if the items are unique:
for x in list:
#code
if x == list[-1]:
#code
other options:
pos = -1
for x in list:
pos += 1
#code
if pos == len(list) - 1:
#code
for x in list:
#code
#code - e.g. print x
if len(list) > 0:
for x in list[:-1]:
#process everything except the last element
for x in list[-1:]:
#process only last element
The 'code between' is an example of the Head-Tail pattern.
You have an item, which is followed by a sequence of ( between, item ) pairs. You can also view this as a sequence of (item, between) pairs followed by an item. It's generally simpler to take the first element as special and all the others as the "standard" case.
Further, to avoid repeating code, you have to provide a function or other object to contain the code you don't want to repeat. Embedding an if statement in a loop which is always false except one time is kind of silly.
def item_processing( item ):
# *the common processing*
head_tail_iter = iter( someSequence )
head = next(head_tail_iter)
item_processing( head )
for item in head_tail_iter:
# *the between processing*
item_processing( item )
This is more reliable because it's slightly easier to prove, It doesn't create an extra data structure (i.e., a copy of a list) and doesn't require a lot of wasted execution of an if condition which is always false except once.
If you're simply looking to modify the last element in data_list then you can simply use the notation:
L[-1]
However, it looks like you're doing more than that. There is nothing really wrong with your way. I even took a quick glance at some Django code for their template tags and they do basically what you're doing.
you can determine the last element with this code :
for i,element in enumerate(list):
if (i==len(list)-1):
print("last element is" + element)
This is similar to Ants Aasma's approach but without using the itertools module. It's also a lagging iterator which looks-ahead a single element in the iterator stream:
def last_iter(it):
# Ensure it's an iterator and get the first field
it = iter(it)
prev = next(it)
for item in it:
# Lag by one item so I know I'm not at the end
yield 0, prev
prev = item
# Last item
yield 1, prev
def test(data):
result = list(last_iter(data))
if not result:
return
if len(result) > 1:
assert set(x[0] for x in result[:-1]) == set([0]), result
assert result[-1][0] == 1
test([])
test([1])
test([1, 2])
test(range(5))
test(xrange(4))
for is_last, item in last_iter("Hi!"):
print is_last, item
We can achieve that using for-else
cities = [
'Jakarta',
'Surabaya',
'Semarang'
]
for city in cities[:-1]:
print(city)
else:
print(' '.join(cities[-1].upper()))
output:
Jakarta
Surabaya
S E M A R A N G
The idea is we only using for-else loops until n-1 index, then after the for is exhausted, we access directly the last index using [-1].
You can use a sliding window over the input data to get a peek at the next value and use a sentinel to detect the last value. This works on any iterable, so you don't need to know the length beforehand. The pairwise implementation is from itertools recipes.
from itertools import tee, izip, chain
def pairwise(seq):
a,b = tee(seq)
next(b, None)
return izip(a,b)
def annotated_last(seq):
"""Returns an iterable of pairs of input item and a boolean that show if
the current item is the last item in the sequence."""
MISSING = object()
for current_item, next_item in pairwise(chain(seq, [MISSING])):
yield current_item, next_item is MISSING:
for item, is_last_item in annotated_last(data_list):
if is_last_item:
# current item is the last item
Is there no possibility to iterate over all-but the last element, and treat the last one outside of the loop? After all, a loop is created to do something similar to all elements you loop over; if one element needs something special, it shouldn't be in the loop.
(see also this question: does-the-last-element-in-a-loop-deserve-a-separate-treatment)
EDIT: since the question is more about the "in between", either the first element is the special one in that it has no predecessor, or the last element is special in that it has no successor.
I like the approach of #ethan-t, but while True is dangerous from my point of view.
data_list = [1, 2, 3, 2, 1] # sample data
L = list(data_list) # destroy L instead of data_list
while L:
e = L.pop(0)
if L:
print(f'process element {e}')
else:
print(f'process last element {e}')
del L
Here, data_list is so that last element is equal by value to the first one of the list. L can be exchanged with data_list but in this case it results empty after the loop. while True is also possible to use if you check that list is not empty before the processing or the check is not needed (ouch!).
data_list = [1, 2, 3, 2, 1]
if data_list:
while True:
e = data_list.pop(0)
if data_list:
print(f'process element {e}')
else:
print(f'process last element {e}')
break
else:
print('list is empty')
The good part is that it is fast. The bad - it is destructible (data_list becomes empty).
Most intuitive solution:
data_list = [1, 2, 3, 2, 1] # sample data
for i, e in enumerate(data_list):
if i != len(data_list) - 1:
print(f'process element {e}')
else:
print(f'process last element {e}')
Oh yes, you have already proposed it!
There is nothing wrong with your way, unless you will have 100 000 loops and wants save 100 000 "if" statements. In that case, you can go that way :
iterable = [1,2,3] # Your date
iterator = iter(iterable) # get the data iterator
try : # wrap all in a try / except
while 1 :
item = iterator.next()
print item # put the "for loop" code here
except StopIteration, e : # make the process on the last element here
print item
Outputs :
1
2
3
3
But really, in your case I feel like it's overkill.
In any case, you will probably be luckier with slicing :
for item in iterable[:-1] :
print item
print "last :", iterable[-1]
#outputs
1
2
last : 3
or just :
for item in iterable :
print item
print iterable[-1]
#outputs
1
2
3
last : 3
Eventually, a KISS way to do you stuff, and that would work with any iterable, including the ones without __len__ :
item = ''
for item in iterable :
print item
print item
Ouputs:
1
2
3
3
If feel like I would do it that way, seems simple to me.
Use slicing and is to check for the last element:
for data in data_list:
<code_that_is_done_for_every_element>
if not data is data_list[-1]:
<code_that_is_done_between_elements>
Caveat emptor: This only works if all elements in the list are actually different (have different locations in memory). Under the hood, Python may detect equal elements and reuse the same objects for them. For instance, for strings of the same value and common integers.
Google brought me to this old question and I think I could add a different approach to this problem.
Most of the answers here would deal with a proper treatment of a for loop control as it was asked, but if the data_list is destructible, I would suggest that you pop the items from the list until you end up with an empty list:
while True:
element = element_list.pop(0)
do_this_for_all_elements()
if not element:
do_this_only_for_last_element()
break
do_this_for_all_elements_but_last()
you could even use while len(element_list) if you don't need to do anything with the last element. I find this solution more elegant then dealing with next().
For me the most simple and pythonic way to handle a special case at the end of a list is:
for data in data_list[:-1]:
handle_element(data)
handle_special_element(data_list[-1])
Of course this can also be used to treat the first element in a special way .
Better late than never. Your original code used enumerate(), but you only used the i index to check if it's the last item in a list. Here's an simpler alternative (if you don't need enumerate()) using negative indexing:
for data in data_list:
code_that_is_done_for_every_element
if data != data_list[-1]:
code_that_is_done_between_elements
if data != data_list[-1] checks if the current item in the iteration is NOT the last item in the list.
Hope this helps, even nearly 11 years later.
if you are going through the list, for me this worked too:
for j in range(0, len(Array)):
if len(Array) - j > 1:
notLast()
Instead of counting up, you can also count down:
nrToProcess = len(list)
for s in list:
s.doStuff()
nrToProcess -= 1
if nrToProcess==0: # this is the last one
s.doSpecialStuff()
I will provide with a more elegant and robust way as follows, using unpacking:
def mark_last(iterable):
try:
*init, last = iterable
except ValueError: # if iterable is empty
return
for e in init:
yield e, True
yield last, False
Test:
for a, b in mark_last([1, 2, 3]):
print(a, b)
The result is:
1 True
2 True
3 False
If you are looping the List,
Using enumerate function is one of the best try.
for index, element in enumerate(ListObj):
# print(index, ListObj[index], len(ListObj) )
if (index != len(ListObj)-1 ):
# Do things to the element which is not the last one
else:
# Do things to the element which is the last one
Delay the special handling of the last item until after the loop.
>>> for i in (1, 2, 3):
... pass
...
>>> i
3
There can be multiple ways. slicing will be fastest. Adding one more which uses .index() method:
>>> l1 = [1,5,2,3,5,1,7,43]
>>> [i for i in l1 if l1.index(i)+1==len(l1)]
[43]
If you are happy to be destructive with the list, then there's the following.
We are going to reverse the list in order to speed up the process from O(n^2) to O(n), because pop(0) moves the list each iteration - cf. Nicholas Pipitone's comment below
data_list.reverse()
while data_list:
value = data_list.pop()
code_that_is_done_for_every_element(value)
if data_list:
code_that_is_done_between_elements(value)
else:
code_that_is_done_for_last_element(value)
This works well with empty lists, and lists of non-unique items.
Since it's often the case that lists are transitory, this works pretty well ... at the cost of destructing the list.
Assuming input as an iterator, here's a way using tee and izip from itertools:
from itertools import tee, izip
items, between = tee(input_iterator, 2) # Input must be an iterator.
first = items.next()
do_to_every_item(first) # All "do to every" operations done to first item go here.
for i, b in izip(items, between):
do_between_items(b) # All "between" operations go here.
do_to_every_item(i) # All "do to every" operations go here.
Demo:
>>> def do_every(x): print "E", x
...
>>> def do_between(x): print "B", x
...
>>> test_input = iter(range(5))
>>>
>>> from itertools import tee, izip
>>>
>>> items, between = tee(test_input, 2)
>>> first = items.next()
>>> do_every(first)
E 0
>>> for i,b in izip(items, between):
... do_between(b)
... do_every(i)
...
B 0
E 1
B 1
E 2
B 2
E 3
B 3
E 4
>>>
The most simple solution coming to my mind is:
for item in data_list:
try:
print(new)
except NameError: pass
new = item
print('The last item: ' + str(new))
So we always look ahead one item by delaying the the processing one iteration. To skip doing something during the first iteration I simply catch the error.
Of course you need to think a bit, in order for the NameError to be raised when you want it.
Also keep the `counstruct
try:
new
except NameError: pass
else:
# continue here if no error was raised
This relies that the name new wasn't previously defined. If you are paranoid you can ensure that new doesn't exist using:
try:
del new
except NameError:
pass
Alternatively you can of course also use an if statement (if notfirst: print(new) else: notfirst = True). But as far as I know the overhead is bigger.
Using `timeit` yields:
...: try: new = 'test'
...: except NameError: pass
...:
100000000 loops, best of 3: 16.2 ns per loop
so I expect the overhead to be unelectable.
Count the items once and keep up with the number of items remaining:
remaining = len(data_list)
for data in data_list:
code_that_is_done_for_every_element
remaining -= 1
if remaining:
code_that_is_done_between_elements
This way you only evaluate the length of the list once. Many of the solutions on this page seem to assume the length is unavailable in advance, but that is not part of your question. If you have the length, use it.
One simple solution that comes to mind would be:
for i in MyList:
# Check if 'i' is the last element in the list
if i == MyList[-1]:
# Do something different for the last
else:
# Do something for all other elements
A second equally simple solution could be achieved by using a counter:
# Count the no. of elements in the list
ListLength = len(MyList)
# Initialize a counter
count = 0
for i in MyList:
# increment counter
count += 1
# Check if 'i' is the last element in the list
# by using the counter
if count == ListLength:
# Do something different for the last
else:
# Do something for all other elements
Just check if data is not the same as the last data in data_list (data_list[-1]).
for data in data_list:
code_that_is_done_for_every_element
if data != data_list[- 1]:
code_that_is_done_between_elements
So, this is definitely not the "shorter" version - and one might digress if "shortest" and "Pythonic" are actually compatible.
But if one needs this pattern often, just put the logic in to a
10-liner generator - and get any meta-data related to an element's
position directly on the for call. Another advantage here is that it will
work wit an arbitrary iterable, not only Sequences.
_sentinel = object()
def iter_check_last(iterable):
iterable = iter(iterable)
current_element = next(iterable, _sentinel)
while current_element is not _sentinel:
next_element = next(iterable, _sentinel)
yield (next_element is _sentinel, current_element)
current_element = next_element
In [107]: for is_last, el in iter_check_last(range(3)):
...: print(is_last, el)
...:
...:
False 0
False 1
True 2
This is an old question, and there's already lots of great responses, but I felt like this was pretty Pythonic:
def rev_enumerate(lst):
"""
Similar to enumerate(), but counts DOWN to the last element being the
zeroth, rather than counting UP from the first element being the zeroth.
Since the length has to be determined up-front, this is not suitable for
open-ended iterators.
Parameters
----------
lst : Iterable
An iterable with a length (list, tuple, dict, set).
Yields
------
tuple
A tuple with the reverse cardinal number of the element, followed by
the element of the iterable.
"""
length = len(lst) - 1
for i, element in enumerate(lst):
yield length - i, element
Used like this:
for num_remaining, item in rev_enumerate(['a', 'b', 'c']):
if not num_remaining:
print(f'This is the last item in the list: {item}')
Or perhaps you'd like to do the opposite:
for num_remaining, item in rev_enumerate(['a', 'b', 'c']):
if num_remaining:
print(f'This is NOT the last item in the list: {item}')
Or, just to know how many remain as you go...
for num_remaining, item in rev_enumerate(['a', 'b', 'c']):
print(f'After {item}, there are {num_remaining} items.')
I think the versatility and familiarity with the existing enumerate makes it most Pythonic.
Caveat, unlike enumerate(), rev_enumerate() requires that the input implement __len__, but this includes lists, tuples, dicts and sets just fine.

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