Python: Loop through the elif section of an if statement

Question

I'm relatively new to python, so I'm not even sure if I'm approaching this in the correct way. But I haven't found a good solution anywhere.

In order to avoid very ugly and repetitive code, i want to loop the elif part of the if statement.

This is the ugly code i want to fix:

def codeToChar(code):
chars = "QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNMqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm"

if code == ord(chars[0]):   ##### SUPER UGLY
    return chars[0]
elif code == ord(chars[1]):
    return chars[1]
elif code == ord(chars[2]):
    return chars[2]
elif code == ord(chars[3]):
    return chars[3]
elif code == ord(chars[4]):
    return chars[4]
elif code == ord(chars[5]):
    return chars[5]
..... etc .....
else:
    return "wat"

As you can see, the index is incrementing by one, so I thought looping would be very simple. However, when I tried the following, it didn't work because this must be formulated as an if, elif, elif, else statement, and not many if statements.

My failed attempt:

for x in xrange(0,len(chars)-1):
    if code == ord(chars[x]):
        return chars[x]
    else:
        return "wat"

How would I go about looping this? Note: if it's of any relevance, I'm coding this using the curses module, building a keyboard interface for a project. Many thanks

fferri · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-13 21:39:40Z

2

for c in chars:
    if code == ord(c):
        return c
return "wat"

the second return is executed only if no previous return has been previously executed (i.e. no character matched).

edited May 13, 2018 at 21:39

answered May 13, 2018 at 21:33

fferri

19k8 gold badges57 silver badges110 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

nuric · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-13 21:34:38Z

1

It seems like you are just checking whether the code is one of the characters or not. One clean solution would be:

c = chr(code)
return c if c in chars else "wat"

answered May 13, 2018 at 21:34

nuric

11.3k3 gold badges29 silver badges43 bronze badges

Comments

ted · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-13 21:34:50Z

1

Use a dict:

chars = "QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNMqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm"
chars_dict = {ord(c): c for c in chars}
return chars_dict.get(code, 'wat')

answered May 13, 2018 at 21:34

ted

14.9k10 gold badges70 silver badges117 bronze badges

Comments

John Kugelman · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-13 21:33:10Z

-1

You don't want to return "wat" inside the loop as it'll trigger as soon as the if statement fails once. You only want to return an error if all iterations failed. Unindent the else block to do this.

for x in xrange(0,len(chars)-1):
    if code == ord(chars[x]):
        return chars[x]
else:
    return "wat"

The else block is optional. You could also write:

for x in xrange(0,len(chars)-1):
    if code == ord(chars[x]):
        return chars[x]
return "wat"

answered May 13, 2018 at 21:33

John Kugelman

365k70 gold badges555 silver badges600 bronze badges

1 Comment

OneCricketeer Over a year ago

Could use enumerate rather than xrange over the length

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Python: Loop through the elif section of an if statement

4 Answers 4

Comments

Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

4 Answers 4

Comments

Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related