How to loop a list on different items inside a function in Python?

Question

I am just getting started on functions in Python. My goal is to loop a list with fruits and for each fruit, print it's letters backwards. When it hits a special character, it will stop and move on to the next fruit. I tried doing this with a loop and adding to the index each time but it would only print the first fruit correctly. If I just put the code for each fruit five times, it works perfectly. Please help me fix the index. Code is below.

def reverse(li):
    c = 1
    while c == 1:
        index = 0
        for c in reversed(li[index]):
            if c.isalpha():
                print(c, end="")
                index += 1
            else:
                print()
                index += 1
                break

fruits = ['ap!ple','bana@na','ma%ngo','#orange','pine*apple']
reverse(fruits)

Are you trying to reverse the first part of the word or the second part? ie, if you have 'ap!ple' are you expecting 'pa' or 'elp'? — dawg
– dawg, Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 17:11
Use a for-loop to loop over the strings in the list. No need for a while loop with indexes — juanpa.arrivillaga
– juanpa.arrivillaga, Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 18:59

Nouman · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-01 17:03:50Z

2

You are looping through the first element of the list only (reversed(li[index])).

def reverse(li):
    for word in li:
        for rev_word in reversed(word):
            if rev_word.isalpha():
                print(rev_word, end="")
            else:
                print()
                break

fruits = ['ap!ple','bana@na','ma%ngo','#orange','pine*apple']
reverse(fruits)

Output:

elp
an
ogn
egnaro
elppa

edited Sep 1, 2018 at 17:03

answered Sep 1, 2018 at 16:46

Nouman

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1 Comment

zvone Over a year ago

Good. I would also suggest to rename the variables: a better name for li would be words. A better name for ii would be word. Then for word in words would be much easier to read and understand.

Daniel · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-01 16:55:08Z

2

You set index to 0, so only the first entry is used. Also, c is after the first iteration never equal to 1, so the while-loop is run only once.

Better create a new string, e.g. with takewhile and print it inside a for loop over all words:

from itertools import takewhile

def reverse(words):
    for word in words:
        print(''.join(takewhile(str.isalpha, reversed(word))))

fruits = ['ap!ple','bana@na','ma%ngo','#orange','pine*apple']
reverse(fruits)

answered Sep 1, 2018 at 16:55

Daniel

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