CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-3.x
nems
nems

Reputation: 19

Python Function returning string with quotes

I have a function and returning three values, The return value for my function is

(1, 3, "<class 'int'>")

while I want to return

(1, 3, <class 'int'>)

How do I remove the quotes from my return value.str(type(element)) is the value which is returning the 3rd value

def is_list_permutation(L1, L2):
    L1set = set(L1)
    L2set = set(L2)
    count = 0
    element = ''
    if L1 == [] and L2 == []:
        return(None,None,None)    
    elif len(L1) == len(L2) and L1set == L2set:
       for a in L1:
          if L1.count(a) == L2.count(a):
              if L1.count(a) > count:
                  count = L1.count(a)
                  element = a
                  return(element,count,str(type(element)))
          else:
              return False
              break

    else:
       return False

so if i give

L1 = [1, 'b', 1, 'c', 'c', 1]
L2 = ['c', 1, 'b', 1, 1, 'c']

then the result is (1, 3, "<class 'int'>") while I want (1, 3, <class 'int'>)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 7331

Answers (2)

poke
poke

Reputation: 388173

Your function is returning a tuple with three elements: element, count and the string representation of the type of element. At no point, this has any string representation which you’re seeing there. You just get back a tuple.

Now, when you print that tuple, then the print function will actually try to convert it into a string. For a tuple, this string representation is defined to be a set of parentheses (), and the repr() string representation of each tuple element inside.

For numbers, this will look fine since repr(5) happens to be the string '5'. But for strings, the repr will add quotes to make sure that the return string would be valid Python code:

>>> repr('foo')
"'foo'"
>>> print(repr('foo'))
'foo'

Now, when you say, you want the result without those quotes, you have to think about what that actually means. You could easily format the result string yourself. For example like this:

return '({0}, {1}, {2})'.format(element, count, str(type(element)))

This will return a string that would look like the way you want.

However, by doing that, you also lose the information you had when you returned a tuple. Now, you just return a string that has no information about the actual source values. So you cannot take the count value out without parsing the string again.

So, think about what you want to do: Do you actually just want something nice to print, or do you actually want to get those three values individually as a return value to be able to use them for something else afterwards?

You could always consider printing the text in the desired format later, if you already have the return values as a tuple…

Btw.: Note that when not calling str(type(element)) but just type(element), you would get back a type element (instead of a string). And the repr() of a type element happens to be exactly what you would want to have. So as a quick fix, you could always get rid of that str() call there.

Upvotes: 2

veganaiZe
veganaiZe

Reputation: 579

There will always be some quotes around it because it is a string!

If you want to return None when the string is "" then you could do this:

x = str(type(s))
return(element, count, x if x else None)

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions