Short (and useful) python snippets [closed]

Question

I like using any and a generator:

if any(pred(x.item) for x in sequence):
    ...

instead of code written like this:

found = False
for x in sequence:
    if pred(x.n):
        found = True
if found:
    ...

I first learned of this technique from a Peter Norvig article.

Initializing a 2D list

While this can be done safely to initialize a list:

lst = [0] * 3

The same trick won’t work for a 2D list (list of lists):

>>> lst_2d = [[0] * 3] * 3
>>> lst_2d
[[0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0]]
>>> lst_2d[0][0] = 5
>>> lst_2d
[[5, 0, 0], [5, 0, 0], [5, 0, 0]]

The operator * duplicates its operands, and duplicated lists constructed with [] point to the same list. The correct way to do this is:

>>> lst_2d = [[0] * 3 for i in xrange(3)]
>>> lst_2d
[[0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0]]
>>> lst_2d[0][0] = 5
>>> lst_2d
[[5, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0]]

The only 'trick' I know that really wowed me when I learned it is enumerate. It allows you to have access to the indexes of the elements within a for loop.

>>> l = ['a','b','c','d','e','f']
>>> for (index,value) in enumerate(l):
...     print index, value
... 
0 a
1 b
2 c
3 d
4 e
5 f

zip(*iterable) transposes an iterable.

>>> a=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6]]
>>> zip(*a)
    [(1, 4), (2, 5), (3, 6)]

It's also useful with dicts.

>>> d={"a":1,"b":2,"c":3}
>>> zip(*d.iteritems())
[('a', 'c', 'b'), (1, 3, 2)]

Fire up a simple web server for files in the current directory:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Useful for sharing files.