CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythontypes
goldisfine
goldisfine

Reputation: 4850

Thinks counter is a string, not an integer

I'm trying to extract the first few elements of a tab-delimited file using the following:

words = []
name_elements = []
counter = 0

for line in f:
    words = line.split()
    for element in words:
        counter = counter + 1
        if words[element].isupper():
           name_elements = words[0:counter-1]

print type(counter)

When I run this code, I get this error:

TypeError: list indices must be integers, not str
logout

Even though when I run type(counter) it says it's an integer.

What's the issue?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 530

Answers (1)

Martijn Pieters
Martijn Pieters

Reputation: 1123410

You are trying to index words with element. element is a string; it is already the item you wanted to get.

The for loop is giving you each element from words in turn, assigning it to the element variable. element is not an integer index into the words list.

Note that your counter is going to go out of bounds; if you want to have an index into the words list along with the element, use the enumerate() function. You are also replacing the name_elements list with a slice from words; perhaps you wanted to extend the list instead:

for line in f:
    words = line.split()
    for counter, element in enumerate(words):
        if element.isupper():
            name_elements.extend(words[:counter-1])

although it is not clear exactly what you wanted to do with the words list in this case.

Upvotes: 5

Related Questions