5 Python Tricks You Wish You Knew Earlier

Tired of Typing? Code 3x Faster with Wispr Flow

Wispr Flow for Windows just landed to make coding (and documentation) a breeze. Talk through your ideas 3× faster than typing, while the AI learns your terminology for better accuracy over time. It integrates with your favorite editors and supports 100+ languages, so you can focus on logic, not keystrokes, now both on Windows & MacOS. Explore Wisp Flow using the link below:

Explore Wisp Flow Here

Introduction

One of the most exciting things about Python is its versatility and depth. Python provides many ways to get things done. When confronted with an issue, Python programmers have a plethora of tips and tricks to choose from to accomplish a task. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and the same applies to programming. As a Python programmer, it never hurts to know more tips and tricks.

In this article, we are going to explore some cool Python tips and tricks (filtering lists, cleaning strings, flattening nested lists, etc.) that you should know and how to leverage these techniques to write cleaner, more efficient code.

1. Using filterfalse to filter a list object

The itertools library has a filterfalse() function that you can use to filter a list object based on a condition. This function is used to filter elements from an iterable that evaluate to False when passed through a given predicate function.

In this code, we use filterfalse() to return a list of even numbers. The filterfalse() function applies the is_odd function to each number in the list. It keeps only the numbers that do not meet the condition (i.e., numbers that are not odd). As a result, we get an iterator containing only the even numbers.

2. String cleaning with the string module

When you are working with strings, it is quite common for strings to contain punctuation characters that may make analysis impossible. These characters must be removed before analysis can be done. You can use the string module to remove punctuation characters from a string. Here is an example:

In this code, we have a string containing punctuation characters at the beginning, inside, and end. To remove them, we use the translate() method along with str.maketrans(), which creates a translation table mapping all punctuation characters to None. Passing this translator to translate() removes all unwanted characters, leaving us with a clean string.

3. Customize list behavior using UserList

The UserList class in Python's collections module is used for creating user-defined list-like objects with customized behaviors. It serves as a base class that you can inherit from when you want to create your own list-like data structures with specialized methods and behaviors. Let's say you want to create a list with a customized append() method by restricting append to only even numbers. Here is how you can do it with UserList:

In this code, the append() method is overridden to allow only even numbers to be added to the list. If an odd number is passed, it prints a message indicating that non-even numbers are not allowed. The sort() method is also overridden to always sort the list in reverse order. When the obj instance is called with the argument 3, which is an odd number, the message "Non-even numbers not allowed" is printed, and the list remains unchanged.

4. Check if list elements are identical using set() function

Do you know that you can use the set() function to check if all the items in a list are identical? Given a list, the set() function will convert the list into a set. This will automatically remove all duplicates from the list. If the length of the resulting set is 1, it means all items in the list are identical. Here is an example:

This code uses the set() function to create a set from the list, which removes duplicate elements. It checks if the length of the set is equal to 1. If it is, it means that all items in the list are identical. Since there are non-identical items in the list, the function returns "Items in the list are not identical." Here is what happens if we pass a list with identical elements to the function:

In this code, since we have passed a list with identical elements as an argument, the function returns "Items in the list are identical."

5. Flatten deeply nested lists using collapse

The Python more_itertools library has a collapse() function that you can use to flatten a nested list. The collapse() function is powerful because you can use it to flatten deeply nested lists. You can install more_itertools using:

pip install more_itertools

Here is an example of the collapse() function in action:

This code uses the collapse() function from the more_itertools module to flatten a deeply nested list. The output is a flattened list: [12, 13, 14, 15]. Additionally, collapse() offers the flexibility to specify the level of flattening, allowing you to control how much of the original nested structure is preserved.

Wrap-Up

When it comes to Python tips and tricks, there's always more to learn. In this article, we explored five useful techniques for filtering lists, cleaning strings, customizing list behavior, checking for identity, and flattening deeply nested lists.

For even more cool Python tips and tricks, check out Python Tips and Tricks: A Collection of 100 Basic & Intermediate Tips & Tricks. This comprehensive resource will deepen your Python knowledge and help you write more efficient code.

To stay updated, consider subscribing to this newsletter. Thanks for reading!

Newsletter Sponsorship

You can reach a highly engaged audience of over 345,000 tech-savvy subscribers and grow your brand with a newsletter sponsorship. Contact me at [email protected] today to learn more about the sponsorship opportunities.