[Tutor] guess the error cause time!

[Daniel Yoo]

On Sun, 22 Sep 2002, Kirk Bailey wrote:

> OK, here is the error:
>
>  File "/www/www.tinylist.org/cgi-bin/TLcommander.py", line 155, in bullshit
>     if data not in
> "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789-_":
> TypeError: string member test needs char left operand

What it's saying is that 'data' itself is not a single character.  It's a
good thing that it's saying that because it's pointing out a bug in the
code:

###
def bull(data):
    for i in data:
        if data not in ("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
                        "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789-_"):
        ## [rest of body cut]
###

In particular, the variable 'i' is not being used anywhere in this loop,
but I think you really do mean to use it... somewhere... *grin*


A regular-expression approach to your problem might be to use a "negative"
character class:

###
def bull(data):
    good_chars = ("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
                  "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789-_")
    evil_pattern = re.compile('[^%s]' % good_chars)
    if evil_pattern.search(data):
        pass # ... we've detected evil characters in the string.
###


Good luck!