[Tutor] populating an array or using a dictionary

[Kent Johnson]

Michael Langford wrote:
> A neater way to do it looks like:
> 
> dic2 = {}
> countOfVars=40
> for line in file('foo.dat'):
>     tokens = line.split()
>     dval = tokens[0]
>     ls = []
>     for i in range(1,countOfVars+1):
>         ls.append(float(tokens[i]))
>     dic2[dval]=tuple(ls)
>     print dic2   

This is not very idiomatic. You can iterate tokens like this:
ls = []
for token in tokens:
   ls.append(float(token))

This can easily be replaced with a list comprehension:

ls = [ float(token) for token in tokens ]

or it can be written using map() (one of the few situations where I 
prefer map() to a list comp):
ls = map(float, tokens)

Kent
Kent