TIL Python3 functions all() and str()

All this time, the solution to my problems was just in front of my eyes.

While I am procrastinating getting ready for the 100DaysOfCode challenge, I am working on a project to rewrite a bash script in Python3.

Today I solved two problems in one go. I am sure the experienced coder would have done it in a minute and with time to spare, but hey that’s how we learn.

My first problem was to nicely transform a list of strings in a way that would make it easier to do multiple regex search on it.

The list looks like this:

ID : 0:0:2
Status : Non-Critical
Name : Physical Disk 0:0:2
State : Online
Failure Predicted : Yes
Progress : Not Applicable
Bus Protocol : SAS
Media : HDD
(...)

It is the result of a command (omreport storage pdisk controller=0) that gathers information about the disks status.

After a closer look I discovered that each item of the list is a byte object (b'ID : 0:0:2') and needs to be transformed to a string type. Also, I wanted to make a nice block for each disk.

This did the trick:

for i in omreport:
    disk_string += str(i, 'utf-8')
blocks = disk_string.split("\n\n")

Note the ‘utf-8’ encoding. More here.

Now blocks is a list of multi-line strings (real strings!) that can be processed with re.findall:

found1 = re.findall(r'^ID\s+\:\s(.*)\n', block, re.MULTILINE)
found2 = re.findall(r'^Status\s+\:\s(.*)\n', block, re.MULTILINE)
found3 = re.findall(r'^State\s+\:\s(\w+)\n', block, re.MULTILINE)

From here we can build a tuple formed by all the information needed and work with that.

found = (found1, found2, found3)

But the last bit is: how can we make sure that the tuple is not empty? How can we throw away something like this: ([], [], []).

And here comes all() to the rescue. More here.

This, again, did the trick:

if all(found):
    result.append(found)

100DaysOfCode checklist

I am about to start my 100DaysOfCode challenge in Python.

I am assuming everyone is familiar with the concept, but if you want to know more here’s some reading/listening material:

I will be following the course “#100DaysOfCode in Python” by Michael Kennedy, Bob Belderbos and Julian Sequeira.

Try is my pre-flight checklist:

  • ✓ setup a dedicated python3 environment on my DigitalOcean development droplet
  • clone the course GitHub repository
  • ✓ tune on an online radio to help focus (either SomFM: Groove Salad or Radio Swiss Classic)
  • ✓ undust my website (last post is dated 2015!) and my twitter account
  • code

(mostly a reminder to myself)