Finding attributes in a list

[James Stroud]

On Saturday 02 April 2005 08:44 pm, Marcus Goldfish wrote:
>    (2) The Player class looks like a nice model for a data table when one
>         wants to sort by arbitrary column.  Would you agree?

The Player class is (and any class) is absolutely fabulous when you have 
heterogenous data (string, int, etc). I would not fall into the trap of LoDs 
(Lists of Dictionaries). They get unwieldy because you always have to manage 
them with functions. You end up writing a module built around your specific 
dictionary and you end up with a duct-taped object oriented design anyway. 
Classes are way better--so use them up front, even if you think that your 
data structure will never be complicated enough to warrant a class. It 
eventually will if it is worth a damn to begin with. Given this is a soccer 
team we are talking about, it is definitely worth being a full fledged class. 
However, if it were basketball...

>    (3) Suppose one wished to construct a player list...[snip]

team = [Player(azip[0],azip[1],azip[2]) for azip in zip(names,attack,defense)]


You have to love listcomp.

Better (IMHO) would be

  team = [Player(azip) for azip in zip(names,attack,defense)]

where a Player might come to life with

  class Player(object):
    def __init__(self, atup):
      self.name, self.attack, self.defense = atup

BUT, even way better (again, IMHO) would be

  ateam = Team(zip(names,attack,defense))

where team could be initialized by a tuple:

  class Team(list):
    def __init__(self, azip):
      for azip in alist:
        self.data.append(Player(atup))

James

-- 
James Stroud, Ph.D.
UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
Box 951570
Los Angeles, CA 90095

http://www.jamesstroud.com/