[Python-ideas] More user-friendly version for string.translate()

[Ryan Birmingham]

I also believe that using a text file would not be the best solution; using
a dictionary, other data structure, or anonomyous function would make more
sense than having a specially formatted file.

On Oct 24, 2016 13:45, "Chris Barker" <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:

> my thought on this:
>
> If you need translate() you probably can write the code to parse a text
> file, and then you can use whatever format you want.
>
> This seems a very special case to build into the stdlib.
>
> -CHB
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 10:39 AM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I would be happy to see a somewhat more general and user friendly
>> version of string.translate function.
>> It could work this way:
>> string.newtranslate(file_with_table, Drop=True, Dec=True)
>>
>> So the parameters:
>>
>> 1. "file_with_table" : a text file with table in following format:
>>
>> #[In]    [Out]
>>
>> 97    {65}
>> 98    {66}
>> 99    {67}
>> 100    {}
>> ...
>> 110    {110}
>>
>>
>> Notes:
>> All values are decimal or hex (to switch between parsing format use
>> Dec parameter)
>> As it turned out from my last discussion, majority prefers hex notation,
>> so I am not in mainstream with my decimal notation here, but both
>> should be supported.
>> Empty [Out] value {} means that the character will be deleted.
>>
>> 2. "Drop = True" this will set the default behavior for those values
>> which are NOT in the table.
>>
>> For Drop = True: all values not defined in table set to [out] = {},
>> and be deleted.
>>
>> For Drop=False: all values not defined in table set [out] = [in], so
>> those remain as is.
>>
>> 3. Dec= True : parsing format Decimal/hex. I use decimal everywhere.
>>
>>
>> Further thoughts: for 8-bit strings this should be simple to implement
>> I think. For 16-bit of course
>> there is issue of memory usage for lookup tables, but the gurus could
>> probably optimise it.
>> E.g. at the parsing stage it is not necessary to build the lookup
>> table  for whole 16-bit range of course,
>> but take only values till the largest ordinal present in the table file.
>>
>> About the format of table file: I suppose many users would want also
>> to define characters directly, I am not sure
>> if it is really needed, but if so, additional brackets or escape char
>> could be used, like this for example:
>>
>> a    {A}
>> \98    {\66}
>> \99    {\67}
>>
>> but as said I don't like very much the idea and would be OK for me to
>> use numeric values only.
>>
>> So approximately I see it.
>> Feel free to share thoughts or criticise.
>>
>>
>> Mikhail
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>
>
>
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>
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