[Tutor] What kind of approach

[Alan Gauld]

"Utkarsh Tandon" <utkarsh.tandon at gmail.com> wrote 
> Alan Gauld wrote:
>> Thats a very long winded and difficult way to do a fairly simple
>> Python task. Don't try to write Python like a C programmer.
> 
> I'm really new to python. And I don't have much experience in 
> programming either 

Ok, My mistake. The code you had was very like the way 
experienced C programmers typically start using Python;
as if it was C. That's not a good way.

> what kind of approach should I have when coding programs 
> in Python ?

Python is often described as coming "with batteries included"
This is because of the 100 plus modules in the standard library 
that provide tools to do most things more easily. The Pythonic 
approach is to leverage those modules, plus the higher level 
data structures within Python to maximum advantage.

The best solution for stripping C comments is probably to 
use a re module's regular expressions. Define a regex that 
matches a C comment, then replace all occurrences of the 
regex with an empty string. Of course defining the regex 
can be a challenge in itself, but it's a different challenge! :-)


-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld