CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonlistselenium
NotMyName
NotMyName

Reputation: 85

My Python list is getting cleared though I'm not clearing it

I'm trying to append a temporary list (temp) to the main list (dfl) where the temporary list changes the elements inside it each iteration of a for loop.

The code snippet is below-

for i in range(1,n+1):#n is the number of rows
    for j in range(2,8):
        data = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//xpath").text #Data is derived from a website element by element
        temp.append(data)
    dfl.append(temp)
    print(dfl)
    temp.clear()

Now, the print(dfl)gets me the desired output, [[list1],[list2]]. But when I execute the same print(dfl) outside the for loop, its printing out two empty lists like so [[],[]]

Where am I going wrong?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 368

Answers (2)

Egbert Ke
Egbert Ke

Reputation: 54

because you clear it with temp.clear()

the temp in dfl is the same object as the temp.

you can try:

import copy
...
dfl.append(copy.deepcopy(temp))

Upvotes: 2

Guy
Guy

Reputation: 50899

dfl.append(temp) doesn't append the values of temp, it append a reference to temp. You need to append a copy of temp

for i in range(1,n+1):#n is the number of rows
    for j in range(2,8):
        data = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//xpath").text #Data is derived from a website element by element
        temp.append(data)
    dfl.append(temp[:])
    print(dfl)
    temp.clear()

Upvotes: 4

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