Iteration of strings

[Alan Kennedy]

Bjarke Dahl Ebert wrote:

>> When writing small scripts in Python, I often make the same error:
>>
>> Some function expects a list of strings, and does something like
>>     for elem in thestringlist: ...
>>
>> What do you think?

Chad Netzer wrote:

> Use an assertion in your function (or script):
> 
> def dont_allow_string_argument( s ):
>     assert not isinstance( s, type("") )

There is only one small problem with this, recognising unicode strings.

>>>dont_allow_string_argument("Hello World!")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in dont_allow_string_argument
AssertionError
>>>dont_allow_string_argument(u"Hello World!")
>>>

I suggest the following amendment:

import types

def dont_allow_string_argument(v):
    assert type(v) not in [types.StringType, types.UnicodeType]

regards,

-- 
alan kennedy
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