maketrans alternative for list - python 2.7

Question

INPUT = ["a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k"]
OUTPUT = ["20","21","22","23","24","25","26","27","28","29","30"]
TABLE = maketrans(INPUT, OUTPUT)
content = content.translate(TABLE)

TypeError: maketrans() argument 1 must be string or read-only character buffer, not list

What I want is, for example, if string = "a", the return to be "20".

I cannot turn INPUT and OUTPUT into strings because they would have different size.

What is the most efficient alternative or tweak?

Use a dict like `TABLE = str.maketrans(dict(zip(INPUT,OUTPUT))) ` — Bharath M Shetty, May 30 '18 at 04:01
Then you should use a different tool other than translate. You *could* make a dict, and use `''.join([d[c] for c in content])` — juanpa.arrivillaga, May 30 '18 at 04:17
example, "a" to "20" example,"b" to "21" example,"c" to "22". There is a clear pattern. I have read the documentation. — Naji Krayem, May 30 '18 at 04:19
You know you can use the builtin `ord()`: `def letter_to_number(c): return str(ord(c) - ord('a') +20)` , and you can gate that to return the character otherwise `def f(c): return str(ord(c) - 77) if 'a' <= c <= 'k' else c` — smci, May 31 '18 at 05:30
...but ultimately why are you trying to do this, it feels like an XY problem? Are you trying to parse into tokens? or modify encodings/decodings? or what? — smci, May 31 '18 at 05:35

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 30 '18 at 04:33

Use a izip_longest (Python 2.x) or zip_longest (Python 3.x):

from itertools import izip_longest

INPUT = ["a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k"]
OUTPUT = ["20","21","22","23","24","25","26","27","28","29","30"]

string = 'a'   # string here

for i, o in izip_longest(INPUT, OUTPUT):
    if i == string:
        print(o)
# 20

maketrans alternative for list - python 2.7

1 Answers1