Cuts up Python strings

Question

Please tell me what you think of this its my first try and I have only been learning Python for 3 days now, works with both 'index' and 'find':

data = ["XBOX 360 | 150 | New",
 "PlayStation 3 | 35 | Broken",
 "Windows 8 | 275 | New"]
Id = 0
one = data[Id].index("|")
two = data[Id].index("|", one+1)
product = data[Id][:one]
price = data[Id][one+2:two]
condition = data[Id][two+2:]
print(product)
print(price)
print(condition)
#Just add more like these:
#three = data[Id].index("|", two+1)
#four = data[Id].index("|", three+1)
#etc... If you want to add more 'Pipes'
#Add one to each 'pipe' no more then that or you'll get an error
#You can add as many new 'data' items as you want
#just change the 'Id' to view them

Answer 1

First, there is no need to use index() method for finding the position of next and next delimiter (and then use it for slicing) - Python is able to split the string at a higher level - pinpoint the delimiter and then use the split() method:

 DELIMITER = " | " # we will use it for splitting the string
 "XBOX 360 | 150 | New".split(DELIMITER) # the result will be ["XBOX 360", "150", "New"]

As you may see from the comment, the result is a list of individual parts.

---

Second - so we now have the list of the appropriate parts of the string.
Let give it the name parts - so parts will be the list:

 ["XBOX 360", "150", "New"]

(You may obtain it by the command parts = data[0].split(DELIMITER) in your code.)

Now instead of using indices for getting individual parts, i. e. "XBOX 360", "150", and "New":

 product = parts[0]
 price = parts[1]
 condition = parts[2]

you may just unpack the parts list:

 product, price, condition = parts

---

Third, fourh, fifth, ... - I'm not going to overload you :-)

Answer 2

You are doing things the hard way, there is a python function to cut up strings namely the .split() method

Thus to make it easier to use and more general I can rewrite your code like this:

data = ["XBOX 360 | 150 | New",
 "PlayStation 3 | 35 | Broken",
 "Windows 8 | 275 | New"]
# Here I loop through the data
# Thus I read each row starting with the XBOX360 line and ending at Windows 8
for row in data:
 # Use .split() to split the string with a specific char(set)
 product_info = row.split(' | ')
 # Tuple unpacking
 product, price, condition = product_info
 # Use pretty formatting
 print ('\nProduct: {}'.format(product))
 print ('Price: {}'.format(price))
 print ('Condition: {}'.format(condition ))

Try it out for yourself to see the difference, and if unclear what is going on you can always ask me

• Erich: [ [ print(word.strip) for word in row.split()] for row in data]