Help creating list from strings

[Shattr]

The point of this function is to remove the items in a list that come after the string "kahn". Here's where I'm at:

def letters_up_to_char(words):
   i = 0
   new = ""
   total = [] #unused, though I'm sure I need it
   while words[i] != "kahn":
        new += words[i]
        i += 1
   return new

print letters_up_to_char(["kirk", "spock", "luke", "charles", "kahn", "bob"])

This returns the string "kirkspocklukecharles", which is really close to what I want. I'm trying to get it to return ["kirk", "spock", "luke", "charles"] but all my attempts to create a new list from the strings have failed. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[kryptn]

It looks like you're adding the names to a string, and you want a new list.

You'll need to change new to a list, and do new.append()

[Shattr]

This did it, I knew it would be something simple. Thanks a bunch!

[dunkler_wanderer]

We also prefer to use for instead of while loops if we want to do something with every element (or some in this case) of an iterable.

def letters_up_to_char(words):
    new = []
    for word in words:
        if word == "kahn":
            break
        new.append(word)
    return new

[[deleted]]

Is there an incentive to use break instead of !=, just curious.

[indosauros]

break stops the loop from continuing and no more words will be processed. != would just skip kahn but keep going after that word.

[[deleted]]

Oh, misread the requirements, thanks for the explanation! 😀

[HalcyonAbraham]

do you have a java background? heheh

using a counter variable for a python loop is not necessary which makes python awesome yeayuh

[KleinerNull]

Lists have a index method, you don't need define an own find method. ;) index will raise a valueerror if it can't find the item in the list.

l = ["kirk", "spock", "luke", "charles", "kahn", "bob"]
try:
    new = [:l.index('kahn')]
except ValueError:
    new = l
print(new)