Are nested lists indestructable?
 

Hello I am trying to create a program that involves writing a whole bunch of lists with information of its specific topic then grouping them together. Normally I would use a hash but they don't really let you create a whole bunch of variables that can be withdrawn later.

So my problem is when I nest them together, based on a random factor I want to delete so many of them from the back, but nothing I write seems to work

I can see doing all this with a whole bunch of if: loops but I know there has to be some easier way

here is my program(at least the part that pertains to it)
(PS. all the importing and preperations are done I simply didn't print it)

a=randint(6,11)
aa=['name', 'att', 'def', 1]
ab=['name', 'att', 'def', 1]
ac=['name', 'att', 'def', 1]
ad=['name', 'att', 'def', 1]
ae=['name', 'att', 'def', 1]
af=['name', 'att', 'def', 1]
ag=['name', 'att', 'def', 1]
ah=['name', 'att', 'def', 1]
ai=['name', 'att', 'def', 1]
aj=['name', 'att', 'def', 1]
abspirlist=[aa,ab,ac,ad,ae,af,ag,ah,ai,aj]
del abspirlist[a:]
shuffle(abspirlist)

Re: Are nested lists indestructable?
 

Are you trying to turn:

abspirlist=[aa,ab,ac,ad,ae,af,ag,ah,ai,aj]

Into a list terminated at a random value, like:

abspirlist=[aa,ab,ac,ad,ae,af]

Why not do:


Where a is your random integer. Or do you want to keep the first dimension in tact, and pop elements from each array in the second dimension? In that case, just use a for loop, with the same code as above used on each nested list individually.

Re: Are nested lists indestructable?
 

whoa, why is it suddenly working, I must of been doing something wrong. Weird I could of swore that, that was the first thing I tried.

Thanks Sane

PS. Is there a way to automaticaly count the number of contents, (or nestled lists) in a list, if not I am going to have to make a mod because it would make everything so much easier

Re: Are nested lists indestructable?
 

So if you had:


You want the number 12, for the total number of nested elements?

You can do that with a little fancy work, by generating a list of lengths (in this case: [4, 4, 4]).

Then feeding it to the sum function (sum([4,4,4]) evaluates 12).

Combining these two ideas gives us:

Re: Are nested lists indestructable?
 

cool then I can divide that by 4 to figure out how many nested lists there are.

You know ever since last night everything seems to be going wrong, I am adding the code to make each list unique and different. Look at whats happening


Lets just say x=4 and y=3

[Guido, 4, 3, 1]

Re: Are nested lists indestructable?
 

Wait, what? Hold on a tick. Divide by 4?

If you just want the number of lists, then use the len function...


That will give you 3 in my example.

And in the code you posted, don't do:


Reassign your array in the same manner I showed you in my second post.

Re: Are nested lists indestructable?
 

got it that was actually old un-updated code, I fixed all that, but do you get why the number generator is not working

Re: Are nested lists indestructable?
 

It's not that it's not working. What appears to be a lack of randomness is actually a side-effect of not creating new variables.

When you create variables inside a function, they need to be returned back to where the function was called if you want to access them.



What that will do is create the variables inside the function, return them as a list, and then assign them to whatever's calling the function.

If the explanation for this behaviour does not seem obvious to you, I suggest that you do a little review on how to use functions and return.

Re: Are nested lists indestructable?
 

ok I see, I always get so caught up in one method that I never think of changing it.