Couple functions I need, assuming they exist?

[Steven Bethard]

Charles Krug wrote:
> myWords = split(aString, aChar) 
> 
> is depreciated but
> 
> myWords = aString.split(aChgar)
> 
> is not?

Yes, that's basically correct.  What's deprecated are the functions in 
the string module.  So
     string.split(a_str, b_str)
is deprecated in favor of
     a_str.split(b_str)


> The target of the problems (my daughter) would prefer that the thousands
> be delimited.  Is there a string function that does this?

I assume you mean translating something like '1000000' to '1,000,000'? 
I don't know of an existing function that does this, but here's a 
relatively simple implementation:

py> import itertools as it
py> def add_commas(s):
...     rev_chars = it.chain(s[::-1], it.repeat('', 2))
...     return ','.join(''.join(three_digits)
...                     for three_digits
...                     in it.izip(*[rev_chars]*3))[::-1]
...
py> add_commas('10')
'10'
py> add_commas('100')
'100'
py> add_commas('1000')
'1,000'
py> add_commas('1000000000')
'1,000,000,000'

In case you haven't seen it before, it.izip(*[itr]*N)) iterates over the 
'itr' iterator in chunks of size N, discarding the last chunk if it is 
less than size N.  To avoid losing any digits, I initially pad the 
sequence with two empty strings, guaranteeing that only empty strings 
are discarded.

So basically, the function iterates over the string in reverse order, 3 
characters at a time, and joins these chunks together with commas.

HTH,

STeVe