Sending string var with apply sends all chars as params!???

[Walter Dörwald]

GimsMail wrote:

> Hi all,
>  
> I am having problems with the apply function in Python.  When applying a 
> string variable to a method, the string var gets chopped up into all it 
> chars and each char gets sent as a parameter!  The result is getting a 
> TypeError because I am sending too much parameters to the function (more 
> detail below if you still don't understand)
>  
> Regards
> Etienne
>  
> Detailed explanation:
> When running my program I get the following:
>  
> My print line debugging string output:
> Formatting value '20020625140609' of type <type 'string' with formatter 
> <function TimeFormatter at 00D613F4>
>  
> as you can see, I am sending the string '20020625140609' to the function 
> TimeFormatter.
>  
> The code that does this is:
> print "UCP: Formatting value '%s' of type '%s' with formatter '%s'" 
> %(value, type(value), formatter)
> value = apply(formatter,(str(value)))

This should be
value = apply(formatter,(str(value),))

But you have only one argument, so this can be simply written
as

value = formatter(str(value))

> in this case, formatter is the function TimeFormatter (as defined in a 
> mapping table)
>  
> When this code executes I get a TypeError:
>  
> TypeError: TimeFormatter() takes exactly 1 argument (14 given).
>  
> Why is the string (which is 14 chars long) broken up into 14 values when 
> passed using apply!?

Because apply expects a sequence of arguments as the second parameter.

> The weird thing is this code has been working for MONTHS and have only 
> recently stopped working after some refactoring in a completely 
> different part of code!
>  
> The problem goes away when I don't use apply:
> value = formatter(value)

Bye,
    Walter Dörwald