{"id":59246,"date":"2022-03-09T13:00:56","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/?p=59246"},"modified":"2022-04-06T09:55:04","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T07:55:04","slug":"improving-our-python-code-an-alternative-to-range","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/python-blog\/improving-our-python-code-an-alternative-to-range\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving our Python code: an alternative to range"},"content":{"rendered":"

range function<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The known Python range function<\/strong>, which they taught us in our programming beginnings to use in a for loop<\/strong>, it is possible that in many cases we can replace it with better options and with cleaner and more modern code. This function has its origin in the C\/C++\/Java languages, predecessors of this programming language, and they really need an index loop variable, but in this programming language it is not necessary to have this index.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The loop for an iterable sequence usually looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

for x in range(len(seq)):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#haz_something_with (seq[x])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The variable x is used only to access the next element from the iterable. Since Python \u201cfor<\/em>"is a loop"foreach<\/em>\u201d, I believe, that there is a better way to do this; iterating directly over the iterable (hence the name) and it would look like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

for<\/em> thing in sequence:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#HDo_something_with (thing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Which in a simple case would look like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Screenshot<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

and would give the expected result for each value in the iteration and using the value defined in the sequence:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

>>27<\/p>\n\n\n\n

>>64<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This way of direct iteration<\/strong> It's about 30% faster, doesn't require creating the indexes, and is easier to read the code (\u201cfor [each] element in [that] sequence, do something with [that element]. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enumerate function<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To modify each element in a mutable iterable<\/strong>, we also have no problem for not having an index. In that case we have another function available: \u201cenumerate yourself\u201d<\/strong>, which returns a generator that produces tuples of elements and their respective indices in the form (x,seq[x]). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let's look at the code of a very simple case:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

for x, thing in enumerate(seq):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

seq[x] = do_something_with(item)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are going to do it with a simple case, where what we do is cube it, taking into account that we use a string for the iteration and therefore the index starts at 0 and the iteration numbers come and it is similar to the previous example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Screenshot<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We obtain the index and the following result:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

0 0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 8<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3 27<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The function "enumerate<\/em>\u201d gives us many advantages and can be used for various processes, which we are not going to detail here and I encourage you to explore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may be thought that it requiresrange<\/em>\u201d to manipulate parallel iterables<\/strong>, such as coordinates. Let's look at an example, where the strings X and Y store the coordinates of two-dimensional points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this case, if we write the code like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Screenshot<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We obtain a coordinate system whose result is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 B<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 a<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we want to go deeper we have other possibilities, like this other simple example, in which we use tuples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Screenshot<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We get a result like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

('Name', 'John')<\/p>\n\n\n\n

('First surname', 'Lopez')<\/p>\n\n\n\n

('Middle last name', 'Garcia')<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We see that Python allows us multiple ways to do the same thing<\/strong> and referring to the zen of Python (import this) we can say: \u201cNow is better than never.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you are a Python developer, this post interests you. In it we will discuss an improvement to our Python code: an alternative to range.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":59262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[407,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-python","category-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eiposgrados.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}