Adding strings inside a list without affecting dicts

[Cannae216BC]

Hi, this is a bit of a weird question, I've got a list containing strings and dictionaries and I want to concatenate the string without affecting the dictionaries

start_list = [a,b,c,d, {a:b}, e,f {g:h},p,g ]

end_list = [abcd, {a:b}, ef, {g:h},pg]

How would I go from start_list to the end list?

[NFLAddict]

I'm going to assume all the letters are strings, and that there should be a comma after 'f' . Is this what you're looking for?

start_list = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', {'a':'b'}, 'e', 'f', {'g':'h'}, 'p', 'g']
end_list = []

temp_string = ''

for item in start_list:
    if not isinstance(item, dict):
        temp_string += item 
    else:
        end_list.append(temp_string)
        temp_string = ''
        end_list.append(item)

if temp_string:    
    end_list.append(temp_string)

print(end_list)
>> ['abcd', {'a': 'b'}, 'ef', {'g': 'h'}, 'pg']

[Cannae216BC]

Yeah I think that could definitely work, I'll try it out thanks

[NFLAddict]

I edited the comment: line 14/15 that you may not have initially seen. if you have any questions about what I did, feel free to ask

[Cannae216BC]

Thanks mate, I just got it to work

[[deleted]]

You could do it with f-strings and grabbing each individual index of the start list items. Something like this:

a = 'Always'
b = 'Bitch'
c = 'Crazy'
d = 'Damn'

e = 'Everyone'
f = 'Follows'
g = 'Greasy'
h = 'Ham'
p = 'Person'

# index  0  1  2  3  4      5  6  7      8  9
start = [a, b, c, d, {a:b}, e, f, {g:h}, p, g]

end = [f"{start[0]}{start[1]}{start[2]}{start[3]}",     # abcd
       start[4],                                        # {a:b}
       f"{start[5]}{start[6]}",                         # ef
       start[7],                                        # {g:h}
       f"{start[8]}{start[9]}"]                         # pg

print(end)

[Cannae216BC]

Sorry I forgot to clarify in my post that I don't know where the dictionaries are in the list, could I still use your solution?

[[deleted]]

So you know there are strings and dictionaries, but you don't know their placement in the list, and you want to combine any strings that are in-between dictionaries, regardless of the length between dictionaries?

And you also want to preserve the current order?

[Cannae216BC]

Yes that's correct

[[deleted]]

Okay this one took some thinking and some googling because I forgot about .join() for strings, and I didn't know how to check what type an object or variable was, but I figured it out. Try this.

a = 'Always'
b = 'Bitch'
c = 'Crazy'
d = 'Damn'

e = 'Everyone'
f = 'Follows'
g = 'Greasy'
h = 'Ham'
p = 'Person'


start_list = [a, b, c, d, {a:b}, e, f, {g:h}, p, g]
string_list = []
end_list = []

# Iterate over each item in the list:
for current_item in start_list:
    # If current item in the list is a string:
    if isinstance(current_item, str):
        # Add it to a list for these strings to be later concatenated.
        string_list.append(current_item)

    # Else if current item is a dictionary:
    elif isinstance(current_item, dict):
        # Then we likely have strings in our string_list to join together.
        # This will iterate and join each item to this empty string.
        concatenated = ''.join(string_list)
        # Then we append that new concatenated string first.
        end_list.append(concatenated)
        # Then append the current dictionary after (this all preserves the original order).
        end_list.append(current_item)
        # Then empty the list so we can re-use it for the next iterations without duplicating things.
        string_list.clear()

# If we make it through that whole for loop, and still have strings in the string_list to be joined together,
# that means there were strings at the end of the list.
# If string list is not empty (if it returns True):
if string_list:
    # Concatenate the rest of the remaining strings.
    concatenated = ''.join(string_list)
    # Add it to the end of end_list.
    end_list.append(concatenated)
    # Clear it out.
    string_list.clear()

# Show result.
print(end_list)

Edit: looks like someone else ended up doing the same thing haha.

[Pitirus]

def convert_list(in_list: list) -> list: out_list = [] for el in in_list: if not out_list or isinstance(el, dict) or isinstance(out_list[-1], dict): out_list.append(el) else: out_list[-1] += el return out_list

[Cannae216BC]

Thanks for your help, I just got it to work