CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonlist
mojbius
mojbius

Reputation: 95

how to access a list inside a function without returning it?

So I accidentally forgot to include a return statement in my method and it just finished running after 10 hours, so i do not want to run it again. Is there a way i can access the wordlist inside this function?

def rm_foreign_chars(corpus):
    wordlist=[]
    for text in corpus:
        for sentence in sent_tokenize(text):
            wordlist.append(sentence)
            for word in word_tokenize(sentence):
                for c in symbols:

                    if c in word:
                        if sentence in wordlist:
                            wordlist.remove(sentence)
                            break

Symbols is a list of symbols: symbols = '฿‑‒–—―‖†‡•‰⁰⁷⁸₂₣℃™→↔∆∙≤⋅─■□▪►▼●◦◾★☎☺♣♦✓✔❖❗➡⠀ⱻ�ₒ'1

Upvotes: 2

Views: 299

Answers (2)

smac89
smac89

Reputation: 43078

Unfortunately, there is no way to access the wordList outside of the function without using some really hacky methods, and munging around in memory. Instead, we can focus on making your function faster. This is what I came up with:

def rm_foreign_chars(corpus):
    wordlist=[]
    for text in corpus:
        for sentence in sent_tokenize(text):
            if not any(c in word for word in word_tokenize(sentence) for c in symbols):
                wordlist.append(sentence)
    return wordlist

You can also make wordlist a global variable. Only reason I suggest making it global is due to how long the function runs (27 minutes is still a long time) If the function fails before completion, you can still get something from wordlist.

def rm_foreign_chars(corpus):
    global wordlist
    for text in corpus:
        for sentence in sent_tokenize(text):
            if not any(c in word for word in word_tokenize(sentence) for c in symbols):
                wordlist.append(sentence)
    return wordlist

wordlist=[]

rm_foreign_chars(...)
# use wordlist here

Upvotes: 4

Jacob Lee
Jacob Lee

Reputation: 4670

There is no way to do this without returning the list. The alternative would be to create a class which contains the function and store the list as an attribute of self.

class Characters:
    def __init__(self, corpus):
        self.corpus = corpus
        self.wordlist = []

    def foreign_chars(self):
        pass
        # Function code goes here
        # Be sure to replace corpus and wordlist
        # With their respective self attributes

chars = Characters()
chars.foreign_chars()
words = chars.wordlist

Do refer to the other answers and comments to optimize your code.

Upvotes: 2

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