"a better input"

[Alex Martelli]

Michael Hudson wrote:

> Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> writes:
> 
>> > *I realize there are no true complex literals, we'd have to do a little
>> > extra work here
>> 
>> What extra work?
>> 
>> >>> complex('23+45j')
>> (23+45j)
> 
> Well, how does cooked_input or whatever tell that 23+45j is a complex
> literal?  The parser won't, at present...

What about:

def isThisAComplexLiteral(this):
    try: complex(this)
    except: return False
    else: return True

if you *must* think in boolean terms?

Of course, the real approach is less silly:

def cooked_input(astr=None):
    if astr=None: astr=raw_input
    for atype in int, long, float, complex:
        try: return atype(astr)
        except: pass
    else:
        return astr

or variations thereon (stripping astr in the
final statement if you think that' better, &c).


Alex