Things to remember about python
My main programming language for a long time (more than 5 years) is C++. I still use it at work every day. Now, when i started to use python for several small (non work-related) projects, there’re several things which made me rewrite some code when i discovered them, since they are done differently in python and C++. In other words, some tips on python for C/C++ programmers and a reminder for me
- when you need to know both element (in sequence) and it’s index use enumerate
for index, element in enumerate([’a', ‘b’, ‘c’]): print ‘i: %d e: %s’ % (index, element)
- when you need to iterate more than one sequence in parallel use zip
for e, o in zip([2,4,6,8], (1,3,5,7)): print e, ‘ :: ‘, o
- use xrange instead of range for performance
- iterate sequences as much as possible instead of using elements index ([] operator). This way if you change your list to generator expression, it’ll still work
- use in operator to verify whether something is in a sequence, i.e.:
if 3 in [1, 2, 3]: print ‘OK’

