CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonsubstring
Dan
Dan

Reputation: 4663

Identify substrings and return responses based on order of substrings in Python

I am a beginner in Python, I am teaching myself off of Google Code University online. One of the exercises in string manipulation is as follows:

# E. not_bad
# Given a string, find the first appearance of the
# substring 'not' and 'bad'. If the 'bad' follows
# the 'not', replace the whole 'not'...'bad' substring
# with 'good'.
# Return the resulting string.
# So 'This dinner is not that bad!' yields:
# This dinner is good!
def not_bad(s):
  # +++your code here+++
  return

I'm stuck. I know it could be put into a list using ls = s.split(' ') and then sorted with various elements removed, but I think that is probably just creating extra work for myself. The lesson hasn't covered RegEx yet so the solution doesn't involve re. Help?

Here's what I tried, but it doesn't quite give the output correctly in all cases:

def not_bad(s):
  if s.find('not') != -1:
    notindex = s.find('not')
    if s.find('bad') != -1:
      badindex = s.find('bad') + 3
      if notindex > badindex:
        removetext = s[notindex:badindex]
        ns = s.replace(removetext, 'good')
      else:
        ns = s
    else:
      ns = s
  else:
    ns = s
  return ns

Here is the output, it worked in 1/4 of the test cases:

not_bad
  X  got: 'This movie is not so bad' expected: 'This movie is good'
  X  got: 'This dinner is not that bad!' expected: 'This dinner is good!'
 OK  got: 'This tea is not hot' expected: 'This tea is not hot'
  X  got: "goodIgoodtgood'goodsgood goodbgoodagooddgood goodygoodegoodtgood  
     goodngoodogoodtgood" expected: "It's bad yet not"

Test Cases:

print 'not_bad'
  test(not_bad('This movie is not so bad'), 'This movie is good')
  test(not_bad('This dinner is not that bad!'), 'This dinner is good!')
  test(not_bad('This tea is not hot'), 'This tea is not hot')
  test(not_bad("It's bad yet not"), "It's bad yet not")

UPDATE: This code solved the problem:

def not_bad(s):
  notindex = s.find('not')
  if notindex != -1:
    if s.find('bad') != -1:
      badindex = s.find('bad') + 3
      if notindex < badindex:
        removetext = s[notindex:badindex]
        return s.replace(removetext, 'good')
  return s

Thanks everyone for helping me discover the solution (and not just giving me the answer)! I appreciate it!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2657

Answers (5)

Disha Agarwal
Disha Agarwal

Reputation: 1

def not_bad(s):
    snot = s.find("not")
    sbad = s.find("bad")
    if snot < sbad:
        s = s.replace(s[snot:(sbad+3)], "good")
        return s
    else:
        return s

Upvotes: 0

eugene_che
eugene_che

Reputation: 1997

Well, I think that it is time to make a small review ;-)

There is an error in your code: notindex > badindex should be changed into notindex < badindex. The changed code seems to work fine.

Also I have some remarks about your code:

  1. It is usual practice to compute the value once, assign it to the variable and use that variable in the code below. And this rule seems to be acceptable for this particular case:

For example, the head of your function could be replaced by

notindex = s.find('not')
if notindex == -1:
  1. You can use return inside of your function several times.

As a result tail of your code could be significantly reduced:

if (*all right*):
    return s.replace(removetext, 'good')
return s

Finally i want to indicate that you can solve this problem using split. But it does not seem to be better solution.

def not_bad( s ):
    q = s.split( "bad" )
    w = q[0].split( "not" )
    if len(q) > 1 < len(w):
        return w[0] + "good" + "bad".join(q[1:])
    return s

Upvotes: 3

Eli Stevens
Eli Stevens

Reputation: 1447

http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#string-methods

I suspect that they're wanting you to use string.find to locate the various substrings:

>>> mystr = "abcd"
>>> mystr.find("bc")
1
>>> mystr.find("bce")
-1

Since you're trying to teach yourself (kudos, BTW :) I won't post a complete solution, but also note that you can use indexing to get substrings:

>>> mystr[0:mystr.find("bc")]
'a'

Hope that's enough to get you started! If not, just comment here and I can post more. :)

Upvotes: 1

TimothyAWiseman
TimothyAWiseman

Reputation: 14873

Since you are trying to learn, I don't want to hand you the answer, but I would start by looking in the python documentation for some of the string functions including replace and index.

Also, if you have a good IDE it can help by showing you what methods are attached to an object and even automatically displaying the help string for those methods. I tend to use Eclipse for large projects and the lighter weight Spyder for small projects

Upvotes: 1

kindall
kindall

Reputation: 184191

Break it down like this:

  1. How would you figure out if the word "not" is in a string?
  2. How would you figure out where the word "not" is in a string, if it is?
  3. How would you combine #1 and #2 in a single operation?
  4. Same as #1-3 except for the word "bad"?
  5. Given that you know the words "not" and "bad" are both in a string, how would you determine whether the word "bad" came after the word "not"?
  6. Given that you know "bad" comes after "not", how would you get every part of the string that comes before the word "not"?
  7. And how would you get every part of the string that comes after the word "bad"?
  8. How would you combine the answers to #6 and #7 to replace everything from the start of the word "not" and the end of the word "bad" with "good"?

Upvotes: 3

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