[Tutor] Iteration issues

[Alan Gauld]

On 07/06/18 23:21, Roger Lea Scherer wrote:

> they won't. I've started from scratch again.
> 
> **********
> import string
> 
> gettysburg =
> open("C:/Users/Roger/Documents/GitHub/LaunchCode/gettysburg.txt", "r")
> 
> puncless = ""
> for char in gettysburg:

I think this is wrong. gettysburg is a file and the iterator for
a file returns a string, so "char" should probably be "line".
Either that or you need to call read() on the file first.

>     if char in string.punctuation:
>         gettysburg.replace(char, "")

But this is also dodgy since you are changing the thing you are
itrerating over. That's a bit like cutting off the branch of a
tree that you are sitting on - bad things can happen. And to
further confuse matters strings are immutable so the replace
returns a new string which you throw away.

But you don't really need to replace the char in the original
you just need to ignore it:

for char in gettysburg.read():
    if char not in string.punctuation:
       puncless += char

print(puncless)

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
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