Reverse String Function in Python (Primitive Steps) - python

I tried coming up with a way to do a reverse string function without using the [ : : -1] method. I'm new to coding and am trying to only use the "primitive" steps. Below is my function and specifications. I was wondering if this is an efficient way to write the function. I appreciate any help. Thanks!
def reverse(word):
x = -2 #word in reversed order counter
y = 1 #starts counter to end "while" statement below
reversed = word[-1] #starts the reversed-word at last letter of word
while len(word) > y: #ending parameter for when all letters run through loop
reversed += word[x] #adds letters to reversed word starting at word[-2]
x -= 1 #moves position in word 1 to the left
y += 1 #increases the counter by 1
return reversed

Adding to a string is slow. It's probably best to make a list of the characters in the string in reversed order, then use the string method join on it.
Example code (fairly close to your original function):
def reverse(word):
index = len(word)-1
result = []
while index >= 0:
result.append(word[index])
index -= 1
return "".join(result)
Better example code:
def reverse(word):
word_list = []
for i in range(len(word)-1, -1, -1):
word_list.append(word[i])
return "".join(word_list)
def reverse(word):
return "".join(word[i] for i in range(len(word)-1, -1, -1))
Even better code:
def reverse(word):
return "".join(reversed("abc"))
or
def reverse(word):
return word[::-1]
But of course, the most efficient code is that with the fewest characters. [/sarcasm]
reverse =lambda s:s and s[-1]+reverse(s[:-1])or s
Yet another solution (I think it is likely to be slow):
def reverse(word):
word_list = []
for i in word:
word_list.insert(0, word[i])
return "".join(word_list)

I like the functional-ish recursive way, but this may not be the best for Python:
def rev(w):
return rev(w[1:]) + w[0] if w else w
You'd want to include type checking or something, or possibly extend this a bit to handle any iterable and not just a string.

Related

How do I count up the number of letter pairs in python?

I am making a program in python that count up the number of letter pairs.
For example ------> 'ddogccatppig' will print 3, 'a' will print 0, 'dogcatpig' will print 0, 'aaaa' will print 3, and 'AAAAAAAAAA' will print 9.
My teacher told me to use a for loop to get the i and i+1 index to compare. I do not know how to do this, and I am really confused. My code:
def count_pairs( word ):
pairs = 0
chars = set(word)
for char in chars:
pairs += word.count(char + char)
return pairs
Please help me!!! Thank you.
The for loop is only to iterate through the appropriate values of i, not directly to do the comparison. You need to start i at 0, and iterate through i+1 being the last index in the string. Work this out on paper.
Alternately, use i-1 and i; then you want to start i-1 at 0, which takes less typing:
for i in range(1, len(word)):
if word[i] == word[i-1]:
...
Even better, don't use the counter at all -- make a list of equality results and count the True values:
return sum([word[i] == word[i-1] for i in range(1, len(word))])
This is a bit of a "dirty trick" using the fact that True evaluates as 1 and False as 0.
If you want to loop over indices instead of the actual characters, you can do:
for i in range(len(word)):
# do something with word[i] and/or word[i+1] or word[i-1]
Converting the string to a set first is counterproductive because it removes the ordering and the duplicates, making the entire problem impossible for two different reasons. :)
Here is an answer:
test = "ddogccatppig"
def count_pairs(test):
counter = 0
for i in range(0,len(test)-1):
if test[i] == test[i+1]
counter+=1
return counter
print(count_pairs(test))
Here you iterate through the length of the string (minus 1 because otherwise you will get an index out of bounds exception). Add to a counter if the letter is the same as the one in front and return it.
This is another (similar) way to get the same answer.
def charPairs(word):
word = list(word)
count = 0
for n in range(0, len(word)-1):
if word[n] == word[n+1]:
count +=1
return count
print(charPairs("ddogccatppig"))
print(charPairs("a"))
print(charPairs("dogcatpig"))
print(charPairs("aaaa"))
print(charPairs("AAAAAAAAAA"))

Is it possible to stop this recursive function?

I wanted to implement the code by using recursive function without for loop or while loop.
And I wanted to implement function called go_through() and take two parameters as a list(list1) and an integer(letters) so that if the element of each length of string has bigger or equal to integer, I replace it using the other function called replace_it()
def go_through(list1, letters):
get_list = list1[:]
num =len(list1)
index = 0
if index != num:
if len(get_list[0]) >= letters:
get_list += replace_it(get_list[0])
index += 1
print(get_list, 'True')
return go_through(get_list[1:], letters)
else:
get_list += [get_list[0]]
index += 1
print(get_list, 'False')
return go_through(get_list[1:], letters)
else:
print(get_list)
def replace_it(string):
if string == 'pineapple':
return ['peach', 'and', 'pear']
if string== 'delicious':
return ['really', 'gross']
go_through(['pineapple','is','delicious','I', 'want', 'it'],7)
should be looking like
peach and pear is really gross I want it
So I have a problem for this codes
It doesn't allow me to stop print as what I want to print is one line
The result would be looking like the picture I attached
But I want to stop where I highlighted and return it as it is the same output what I wrote above.
How can I fix this problem?
The list is not reducing at any point. get_list += [get_list[0]] in the else block keeps the list the same size when followed by return go_through(get_list[1:], letters), while get_list += replace_it(get_list[0]) in the if will always extend the list.
Maybe you meant something like
else:
# this isn't needed
# get_list += [get_list[0]]
return go_through(get_list[1:], letters)
Also, it seems that you're getting the list order mixed up in the first bit maybe.
if len(get_list[0]) >= letters:
# this is adding the new list at the end, not replacing the word
# get_list += replace_it(get_list[0])
# you can send the shortened list to the function again,
# and stick the replacement words at the start
return replace_it(get_list[0]) + go_through(get_list[1:], letters)

Intro to Python - Lists questions

we've started doing Lists in our class and I'm a bit confused thus coming here since previous questions/answers have helped me in the past.
The first question was to sum up all negative numbers in a list, I think I got it right but just want to double check.
import random
def sumNegative(lst):
sum = 0
for e in lst:
if e < 0:
sum = sum + e
return sum
lst = []
for i in range(100):
lst.append(random.randrange(-1000, 1000))
print(sumNegative(lst))
For the 2nd question, I'm a bit stuck on how to write it. The question was:
Count how many words occur in a list up to and including the first occurrence of the word “sap”. I'm assuming it's a random list but wasn't given much info so just going off that.
I know the ending would be similar but no idea how the initial part would be since it's string opposed to numbers.
I wrote a code for a in-class problem which was to count how many odd numbers are on a list(It was random list here, so assuming it's random for that question as well) and got:
import random
def countOdd(lst):
odd = 0
for e in lst:
if e % 2 = 0:
odd = odd + 1
return odd
lst = []
for i in range(100):
lst.append(random.randint(0, 1000))
print(countOdd(lst))
How exactly would I change this to fit the criteria for the 2nd question? I'm just confused on that part. Thanks.
The code to sum -ve numbers looks fine! I might suggest testing it on a list that you can manually check, such as:
print(sumNegative([1, -1, -2]))
The same logic would apply to your random list.
A note about your countOdd function, it appears that you are missing an = (== checks for equality, = is for assignment) and the code seems to count even numbers, not odd. The code should be:
def countOdd(lst):
odd = 0
for e in lst:
if e%2 == 1: # Odd%2 == 1
odd = odd + 1
return odd
As for your second question, you can use a very similar function:
def countWordsBeforeSap(inputList):
numWords = 0
for word in inputList:
if word.lower() != "sap":
numWords = numWords + 1
else:
return numWords
inputList = ["trees", "produce", "sap"]
print(countWordsBeforeSap(inputList))
To explain the above, the countWordsBeforeSap function:
Starts iterating through the words.
If the word is anything other than "sap" it increments the counter and continues
If the word IS "sap" then it returns early from the function
The function could be more general by passing in the word that you wanted to check for:
def countWordsBefore(inputList, wordToCheckFor):
numWords = 0
for word in inputList:
if word.lower() != wordToCheckFor:
numWords = numWords + 1
else:
return numWords
inputList = ["trees", "produce", "sap"]
print(countWordsBeforeSap(inputList, "sap"))
If the words that you are checking come from a single string then you would initially need to split the string into individual words like so:
inputString = "Trees produce sap"
inputList = inputString.split(" ")
Which splits the initial string into words that are separated by spaces.
Hope this helps!
Tom
def count_words(lst, end="sap"):
"""Note that I added an extra input parameter.
This input parameter has a default value of "sap" which is the actual question.
However you can change this input parameter to any other word if you want to by
just doing "count_words(lst, "another_word".
"""
words = []
# First we need to loop through each item in the list.
for item in lst:
# We append the item to our "words" list first thing in this loop,
# as this will make sure we will count up to and INCLUDING.
words.append(item)
# Now check if we have reached the 'end' word.
if item == end:
# Break out of the loop prematurely, as we have reached the end.
break
# Our 'words' list now has all the words up to and including the 'end' variable.
# 'len' will return how many items there are in the list.
return len(words)
lst = ["something", "another", "woo", "sap", "this_wont_be_counted"]
print(count_words(lst))
Hope this helps you understand lists better!
You can make effective use of list/generator comprehensions. Below are fast and memory efficient.
1. Sum of negatives:
print(sum( i<0 for i in lst))
2. Count of words before sap: Like you sample list, it assumes no numbers are there in list.
print(lst.index('sap'))
If it's a random list. Filter strings. Find Index for sap
l = ['a','b',1,2,'sap',3,'d']
l = filter(lambda x: type(x)==str, l)
print(l.index('sap'))
3. Count of odd numbers:
print(sum(i%2 != 0 for i in lst))

finding the index of the first letter of a sub string in the main string

I am trying to find the index of the first letter of a sub string within the main string. The function acts exactly like the find method of python. I have created a find_chr function that gives me the index of a character in a string and I am using the find_chr to get the index of the substring.
def find_str(s,x):
i=0
if x in s:
return find_chr(s,x[i])
else:
return -1
My problem is that when I am using the string "IS GOING GOING" and substring as "ING", I am getting the index of the first "I", when I am expecting the index of the "I" of "ING". I will appreciate any input about changing the function to get the right index of the first letter of the substring.
In find_str you call find_chr(s,x[i]). This is calling find_chr with only x[i] (the ith part of the substring).
This should fix your problem
def find_chr(s,char):
i=0
step = len(char)
for j in range(len(s)+1):
ch = s[j:j+step]
if ch==char:
return (i)
break
i+=1
return -1
def find_str(s,x):
i=0
if x in s:
return find_chr(s,x)
else:
return -1
You aren't looping through the characters, you only check for i == 0 (i.e. the first character in s). You need to apply a "window" to the string, checking len(s) characters in a row:
def find_str(s, x):
if x in s: # is x present?
for i in range(len(s)): # work through string indices
if s[i:i+len(x)] == x: # does x start at current index?
return i
return -1
This should solve your problem:
def find_str(s, x):
i = 0
while i < len(s):
if s[i:i + len(x)] == x:
return i
else:
i += 1
print find_str('IS GOING GOING', 'ING')
Look up the use of the index function in strings. You will then happily replace all of that code with about 1 line.
Supplying the answer because of the following comments. Seriously though, if one is going to learn python, it is a good exercise to be aware of the methods available for an object.
>>> 'is going going'.index('ing')
5
or more generally
>>> fullstring.index(substring)
This should be marked as the correct answer because it is the simplest and most obviously correct. The complexity of the algorithms offered is way too high for this problem.
If the substring is not in the fullstring, a ValueError exception will be raised. So if you need a function, then it should return the index from a try or -1 (or None) from the except blocks.

Reverse a string without using reversed() or [::-1]?

I came across a strange Codecademy exercise that required a function that would take a string as input and return it in reverse order. The only problem was you could not use the reversed method or the common answer here on stackoverflow, [::-1].
Obviously in the real world of programming, one would most likely go with the extended slice method, or even using the reversed function but perhaps there is some case where this would not work?
I present a solution below in Q&A style, in case it is helpful for people in the future.
You can also do it with recursion:
def reverse(text):
if len(text) <= 1:
return text
return reverse(text[1:]) + text[0]
And a simple example for the string hello:
reverse(hello)
= reverse(ello) + h # The recursive step
= reverse(llo) + e + h
= reverse(lo) + l + e + h
= reverse(o) + l + l + e + h # Base case
= o + l + l + e + h
= olleh
Just another option:
from collections import deque
def reverse(iterable):
d = deque()
d.extendleft(iterable)
return ''.join(d)
Use reversed range:
def reverse(strs):
for i in xrange(len(strs)-1, -1, -1):
yield strs[i]
...
>>> ''.join(reverse('hello'))
'olleh'
xrange or range with -1 step would return items in reversed order, so we need to iterate from len(string)-1 to -1(exclusive) and fetch items from the string one by one.
>>> list(xrange(len(strs) -1, -1 , -1))
[4, 3, 2, 1, 0] #iterate over these indexes and fetch the items from the string
One-liner:
def reverse(strs):
return ''.join([strs[i] for i in xrange(len(strs)-1, -1, -1)])
...
>>> reverse('hello')
'olleh'
EDIT
Recent activity on this question caused me to look back and change my solution to a quick one-liner using a generator:
rev = ''.join([text[len(text) - count] for count in xrange(1,len(text)+1)])
Although obviously there are some better answers here like a negative step in the range or xrange function. The following is my original solution:
Here is my solution, I'll explain it step by step
def reverse(text):
lst = []
count = 1
for i in range(0,len(text)):
lst.append(text[len(text)-count])
count += 1
lst = ''.join(lst)
return lst
print reverse('hello')
First, we have to pass a parameter to the function, in this case text.
Next, I set an empty list, named lst to use later. (I actually didn't know I'd need the list until I got to the for loop, you'll see why it's necessary in a second.)
The count variable will make sense once I get into the for loop
So let's take a look at a basic version of what we are trying to accomplish:
It makes sense that appending the last character to the list would start the reverse order. For example:
>>lst = []
>>word = 'foo'
>>lst.append(word[2])
>>print lst
['o']
But in order to continue reversing the order, we need to then append word[1] and then word[0]:
>>lst.append(word[2])
>>lst.append(word[1])
>>lst.append(word[0])
>>print lst
['o','o','f']
This is great, we now have a list that has our original word in reverse order and it can be converted back into a string by using .join(). But there's a problem. This works for the word foo, it even works for any word that has a length of 3 characters. But what about a word with 5 characters? Or 10 characters? Now it won't work. What if there was a way we could dynamically change the index we append so that any word will be returned in reverse order?
Enter for loop.
for i in range(0,len(text)):
lst.append(text[len(text)-count])
count += 1
First off, it is necessary to use in range() rather than just in, because we need to iterate through the characters in the word, but we also need to pull the index value of the word so that we change the order.
The first part of the body of our for loop should look familiar. Its very similar to
>>lst.append(word[..index..])
In fact, the base concept of it is exactly the same:
>>lst.append(text[..index..])
So what's all the stuff in the middle doing?
Well, we need to first append the index of the last letter to our list, which is the length of the word, text, -1. From now on we'll refer to it as l(t) -1
>>lst.append(text[len(text)-1])
That alone will always get the last letter of our word, and append it to lst, regardless of the length of the word. But now that we have the last letter, which is l(t) - 1, we need the second to last letter, which is l(t) - 2, and so on, until there are no more characters to append to the list. Remember our count variable from above? That will come in handy. By using a for loop, we can increment the value of count by 1 through each iteration, so that the value we subtract by increases, until the for loop has iterated through the entire word:
>>for i in range(0,len(text)):
..
.. lst.append(text[len(text)-count])
.. count += 1
Now that we have the heart of our function, let's look at what we have so far:
def reverse(text):
lst = []
count = 1
for i in range(0,len(text)):
lst.append(text[len(text)-count])
count += 1
We're almost done! Right now, if we were to call our function with the word 'hello', we would get a list that looks like:
['o','l','l','e','h']
We don't want a list, we want a string. We can use .join for that:
def reverse(text):
lst = []
count = 1
for i in range(0,len(text)):
lst.append(text[len(text)-count])
count += 1
lst = ''.join(lst) # join the letters together without a space
return lst
And that's it. If we call the word 'hello' on reverse(), we'd get this:
>>print reverse('hello')
olleh
Obviously, this is way more code than is necessary in a real life situation. Using the reversed function or extended slice would be the optimal way to accomplish this task, but maybe there is some instance when it would not work, and you would need this. Either way, I figured I'd share it for anyone who would be interested.
If you guys have any other ideas, I'd love to hear them!
Only been coding Python for a few days, but I feel like this was a fairly clean solution. Create an empty list, loop through each letter in the string and append it to the front of the list, return the joined list as a string.
def reverse(text):
backwardstext = []
for letter in text:
backwardstext.insert(0, letter)
return ''.join(backwardstext)
I used this:
def reverse(text):
s=""
l=len(text)
for i in range(l):
s+=text[l-1-i]
return s
Inspired by Jon's answer, how about this one
word = 'hello'
q = deque(word)
''.join(q.pop() for _ in range(len(word)))
This is a very interesting question, I will like to offer a simple one
liner answer:
>>> S='abcdefg'
>>> ''.join(item[1] for item in sorted(enumerate(S), reverse=True))
'gfedcba'
Brief explanation:
enumerate() returns [(0, 'a'), (1, 'b'), (2, 'c'), (3, 'd'), (4, 'e'), (5, 'f'), (6, 'g')]. The indices and the values.
To reverse the values, just reverse sort it by sorted().
Finally, just put it together back to a str
I created different versions of how to reverse a string in python in my repo:
https://github.com/fedmich/Python-Codes/tree/master/Reverse%20a%20String
You can do it by using list-comprehension or lambda technique:
# Reverse a string without using reverse() function
s = 'Federico';
li = list( s ) #convert string to list
ret = [ li[i-1] for i in xrange(len(li),0,-1) ] #1 liner lambda
print ( "".join( ret ) )
or by doing a backward for loop
# Reverse a string without using reverse() function
s = 'Federico';
r = []
length = len(s)
for i in xrange(length,0,-1):
r.append( s[ i - 1] )
print ( "".join(r) )
reduce(lambda x, y : y + x, "hello world")
A golfed version: r=lambda x:"".join(x[i] for i in range(len(x-1),-1,-1)).
i just solved this in code academy and was checking my answers and ran across this list. so with a very limited understanding of python i just did this and it seamed to work.
def reverse(s):
i = len(s) - 1
sNew = ''
while i >= 0:
sNew = sNew + str(s[i])
i = i -1
return sNew
def reverse(s):
return "".join(s[i] for i in range(len(s)-1, -1, -1))
Blender's answer is lovely, but for a very long string, it will result in a whopping RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded. One might refactor the same code into a while loop, as one frequently must do with recursion in python. Obviously still bad due to time and memory issues, but at least will not error.
def reverse(text):
answer = ""
while text:
answer = text[0] + answer
text = text[1:]
return answer
Today I was asked this same exercise on pen&paper, so I come up with this function for lists:
def rev(s):
l = len(s)
for i,j in zip(range(l-1, 0, -1), range(l//2)):
s[i], s[j] = s[j], s[i]
return s
which can be used with strings with "".join(rev(list("hello")))
This is a way to do it with a while loop:
def reverse(s):
t = -1
s2 = ''
while abs(t) < len(s) + 1:
s2 = s2 + s[t]
t = t - 1
return s2
I have also just solved the coresponding exercise on codeacademy and wanted to compare my approach to others. I have not found the solution I used so far, so I thought that I sign up here and provide my solution to others. And maybe I get a suggestion or a helpful comment on how to improve the code.
Ok here it goes, I did not use any list to store the string, instead I have just accessed the string index. It took me a bit at first to deal with the len() and index number, but in the end it worked :).
def reverse(x):
reversestring = ""
for n in range(len(str(x))-1,-1, -1):
reversestring += x[n]
return reversestring
I am still wondering if the reversestring = "" could be solved in a more elegant way, or if it is "bad style" even, but i couldn't find an answer so far.
def reverse(text):
a=""
l=len(text)
while(l>=1):
a+=text[l-1]
l-=1
return a
i just concatenated the string a with highest indexes of text (which keeps on decrementing by 1 each loop).
All I did to achieve a reverse string is use the xrange function with the length of the string in a for loop and step back per the following:
myString = "ABC"
for index in xrange(len(myString),-1):
print index
My output is "CBA"
You can simply reverse iterate your string starting from the last character. With python you can use list comprehension to construct the list of characters in reverse order and then join them to get the reversed string in a one-liner:
def reverse(s):
return "".join([s[-i-1] for i in xrange(len(s))])
if you are not allowed to even use negative indexing you should replace s[-i-1] with s[len(s)-i-1]
You've received a lot of alternative answers, but just to add another simple solution -- the first thing that came to mind something like this:
def reverse(text):
reversed_text = ""
for n in range(len(text)):
reversed_text += text[-1 - n]
return reversed_text
It's not as fast as some of the other options people have mentioned(or built in methods), but easy to follow as we're simply using the length of the text string to concatenate one character at a time by slicing from the end toward the front.
def reverseThatString(theString):
reversedString = ""
lenOfString = len(theString)
for i,j in enumerate(theString):
lenOfString -= 1
reversedString += theString[lenOfString]
return reversedString
This is my solution using the for i in range loop:
def reverse(string):
tmp = ""
for i in range(1,len(string)+1):
tmp += string[len(string)-i]
return tmp
It's pretty easy to understand. I start from 1 to avoid index out of bound.
Here's my contribution:
def rev(test):
test = list(test)
i = len(test)-1
result = []
print test
while i >= 0:
result.append(test.pop(i))
i -= 1
return "".join(result)
You can do simply like this
def rev(str):
rev = ""
for i in range(0,len(str)):
rev = rev + str[(len(str)-1)-i]
return rev
Here is one using a list as a stack:
def reverse(s):
rev = [_t for _t in s]
t = ''
while len(rev) != 0:
t+=rev.pop()
return t
Try this simple and elegant code.
my_string= "sentence"
new_str = ""
for i in my_string:
new_str = i + new_str
print(new_str)
you have got enough answer.
Just want to share another way.
you can write a two small function for reverse and compare the function output with the given string
var = ''
def reverse(data):
for i in data:
var = i + var
return var
if not var == data :
print "No palindrome"
else :
print "Palindrome"
Not very clever, but tricky solution
def reverse(t):
for j in range(len(t) // 2):
t = t[:j] + t[- j - 1] + t[j + 1:- j - 1] + t[j] + t[len(t) - j:]
return t
Pointfree:
from functools import partial
from operator import add
flip = lambda f: lambda x, y: f(y, x)
rev = partial(reduce, flip(add))
Test:
>>> rev('hello')
'olleh'

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