Why won't python remove all the strings that are greetings from list?

Question

.Remove isn't working correctly!

I'm making an Ai and i am trying to remove any words that are the Ai's name or a greeting! But it only removes the first it finds if even that, If someone knows what's going on i'd really appreciate some help. Oh and what_person_said_l_wt is user input tokenized in lowercase (using .lower), just so you know, Thanks here's my code:

Static_Greetings = ["hey","hi","hello"]
Name = ["jarvis"]


for word in what_person_said_l_wt:
      if word in Static_Greetings or word in Name:
            print (word)
            what_person_said_l_wt.remove(word)

Results

input: hey jarvis what is the weather?


Modified: jarvis what is the weather

It does not remove both "Hey" and "Jarvis" to leave just the question: "what is the weather?" as it is supposed to!

Did you *tokenize* the user input, i.e. split it into words? Show that code! — alexis, Jul 23 '17 at 01:56
"The standard library isn't working correctly" is almost always wrong for a mature language. It's usually that you have incorrect expectations about how it should work. And in Python particularly, how it works is usually more sensible than your expectations in the long run. Also, your question does not provide a [mcve]. It clearly has errors like the missing initialization of `what_person_said_l_wt`. (You mention that it's user input, but this obviously has nothing to do with your problem and you *should* be able to demonstrate it with a hard coded value.) — jpmc26, Jul 23 '17 at 01:56

Software2 · Answer 1 · 2017-07-23T01:56:59.833

3

You are iterating through a list as you are removing elements from it.

Make a copy of the list, and iterate through that. This way, you can still remove from the original list, while retaining your position in the loop.

edited Jul 23 '17 at 01:56

answered Jul 23 '17 at 01:55

Software2

2,358
1
18
28

So what should i do? – Sergei Glimis Jul 23 '17 at 01:56
1

make a copy of the list and iterate through that – n1c9 Jul 23 '17 at 02:04

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 23 '17 at 02:03

0

Cannot modify list as you iterate through. Rather, use something like this. It will remove (filter out) the words in static greetings and name.

Static_Greetings = ["hey","hi","hello"]
Name = ["jarvis"]

what_person_said = 'hey jarvis what is the weather?'
print(' '.join([word for word in what_person_said.split()
    if word not in Static_Greetings + Name]))

what is the weather?

answered Jul 23 '17 at 02:03

user2291982

11
2

i got a AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'split' Error!! Why did that happen? – Sergei Glimis Jul 23 '17 at 03:18
if 'list' object has no 'split', then 'what_person_said' is a list rather than a string as in the example. – user2291982 Jul 23 '17 at 11:23
oh yeah right i figured that out pretty fast – Sergei Glimis Jul 23 '17 at 16:41
but it still isn't removing all of them from the list! – Sergei Glimis Jul 23 '17 at 16:42
def Question_Greeting_Check(what_person_said_l,what_person_said_l_wt,First_dialogue): try: global Greeting_Found if Static_Greetings or Name in what_person_said_l_wt: what_person_said_l_wt = ' '.join([word for word in what_person_said_l_wt if word not in Static_Greetings + Name]) Greeting_Found = True return False – Sergei Glimis Jul 23 '17 at 16:46
it worked at first but when i incorporated it into my code it stopped working! – Sergei Glimis Jul 23 '17 at 16:48

Why won't python remove all the strings that are greetings from list?

.Remove isn't working correctly!

2 Answers2