[Tutor] detecting a change in a iterable object (list, array, etc.)

[Kent Johnson]

Tim Michelsen wrote:
> Hello,
> would like to ask for your help on the following issue:
> What procedure can I use to detect if there's a change when iterating 
> over a list?
> 
> For instance if I want to extract the years 1997 and 1998 from the table 
> below and save them into separate files?

A list comprehension will work for this. If data is a list of triples of 
(year, month, volume) then this will give you a list of the 1997 triples:

data1997 = [ item for item in data if item[0]==1997 ]

> How do I build the average only on the 1997-year values?

Given the above data1997 list can you do this? Sum the third values and 
divide by the length of the list.

> Or how do find out that there is three successive values 3*2 and 3*2 in 
> the volume column?

itertools.groupby() is helpful for this. It's a bit tricky to understand 
though. Here is an extended example:
http://personalpages.tds.net/~kent37/blog/arch_m1_2005_12.html#e69

Here is an example that shows sequences of values of length 3 or more:

import itertools
def key(item):
     return item[2]

for k, g in itertools.groupby(data, key=key):
     g = list(g)
     if len(g) > 2:
         print k, 'occurs', len(g), 'times'

> 
> I already tried a for-loop in connection with a last_value == current 
> value comparison but wasn't successful at all.

If you show us what you have done so far it would be easier to make
suggestions.

Kent