Comparing strings - akin to Perl's "=~"

[Carsten Haese]

krumblebunk at gmail.com wrote:
> for foo in sc.query(sql).dictresult():   <- this returns a dict of the
> result
>     f=dict(foo)
>     for k in f.iteritems()
>         if k == '^Hostname':               <-- need this sort of
> behaviour - match a partial string.
>         print "%s" % f[3]              <-- ..and if true, need to pull
> out the 4th column on that line.
> 
> This breaks spectacularly -

Several observations:

* "breaks spectacularly" is not a useful description of a failure. If 
you get an exception, show us the exception. If you get an unexpected 
result, show us the result and tell us how it differs from the result 
you expected.

* To check whether a string starts with a given string, use the 
startswith() method: if k.startswith("Hostname"): ...

* Why the "f=dict(foo)"? Isn't foo already a dictionary?

* Since f is a dictionary, presumably keyed on column names, f[3] is 
unlikely to work. You're going to have to use the name of the fourth 
column to pull out the value you're looking for.

HTH,

--
Carsten Haese
http://informixdb.sourceforge.net