for loop troubles

[Greg Jorgensen]

In article <3AE8EFCC.CEFCF61F at nmt.edu>, "Jeff Shipman" <shippy at nmt.edu>
wrote:

> I've used this method before to do funky for loop stuff, but for some
> reason, I'm getting a line skipped this time.
> 
> What I'm trying to do is convert items that have one or more tabs at the
> beginning of a line followed by a * into unordered list HTML. If I ever
> hit more tabs than I'm currently at, I must be in a sublist so I call
> this function recursively. It all works great except when I come out of
...snip...

Simplify. Try this:

def printlist(lines):
    "print lines starting with <tab>* as HTML nested unordered lists"

    depth = 0
    indent = "    "             # spaces to indent HTML

    for line in lines:
        # does line begin with one or more tabs followed by *?
        i = line.find("*")
        if i >= 0 and line[0:i] == ("\t" * i):
            if i > depth:       # increase indent
                print (indent * depth) + "<UL>"
                depth += 1
            elif i < depth:     # decrease indent
                depth -= 1
                print (indent * depth) + "</UL>"

            print (indent * depth) + "<LI>" + line[i+1:]
        else:
            # no leading tabs, output line as-is
            print (indent * depth) + line

    # close all lists
    while depth > 0:
        depth -= 1
        print (indent * depth) + "</UL>"


Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
gregj at pobox.com