Using a list of strings in an if statement

Question

I have several lists that are structured as follows

list_01= [['Little Line', '15']]
list_02= [['Long Line', '20']]

Later on in the code after these lists I want to create a function that defines the creation of lines that I want to work as follows. If the items in the list equal the strings 'Little Line' and '15', it will create a little line.

def draw_line(dataset):
    if dataset[0[0]]==('Little Line'):
        left(dataset[0[1]])
        foward(25)

Later, I can then call this function as follows later on in the code:

draw_line(list_01)

to create the line. The code I've described is pretty similar to my current code and shows how I believe it should work. I understand this should probably be pretty basic code, but I'm experiencing errors and can't quite figure out how it should work.

`dataset[0[0]]` is not going to work, you can't index integers (`0[0]`). Did you mean `dataset[0][0]` perhaps? Why the nested format? — Martijn Pieters, Apr 17 '17 at 11:33
It seems your way of accessing the dataset is wrong. `dataset[0[1]]` should've been `dataset[0][1]`. `[0[1]]` is not a real index as it should have just been a number. — kreddyio, Apr 17 '17 at 11:36
Please look into [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/27527429/3209112) for better understanding. — ABcDexter, Apr 17 '17 at 11:37

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 17 '17 at 11:33

Your syntax for accessing nested lists is wrong. Instead of

dataset[0[0]]

you need to do

dataset[0][0]

But in general, a list is not a reasonable datatype for this. A dictionary would make a lot more sense:

moves = {
    "Little line": 15,
    "Long line": 20,
    # etc.
    }

and then do something like

def draw_line(dataset):
    left(dataset[0])
    forward(25)

Using a list of strings in an if statement

1 Answers1