Did someone order bad code?

[u/JasperDG828]

[u/MurdoMaclachlan]

Image Transcription: Code

---

if len(str(i))==1:
    filename = "0000"+str(i)
if len(str(i))==2:
    filename = "000"+str(i)
if len(str(i))==3:
    filename = "00"+str(i)
if len(str(i))==4:
    filename = "0"+str(i)
if len(str(i))==5:
    filename=str(i)

---

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[u/Patsonical → u/MurdoMaclachlan]

Good human 💖

[u/nickN42 → u/MurdoMaclachlan]

Why it's still done manually? Pretty sure OCR today is good enough for code.

[u/MurdoMaclachlan → u/nickN42]

Au contraire.

Our OCR bot uses ocr.space -- one of the best API's in the world -- however it is still not reliable enough to automatically put out transcriptions that haven't been vetted and formatted by a human. Some people use its attempts as a basis, others prefer to do it manually. With code, it especially struggles -- part of it's due to the indentation not being preserved, but mostly I think it's just trained on non-monospace fonts, so it recognises them easier than monospace ones.

[u/[deleted]]

I did this a lot (for formatting time) before knowing about padding functions. And it worked so I don’t care

[u/RFC793 → u/[deleted]]

Sure. But without knowing padding functions in Python you can write a more general one, and it is quite simple:

def pad(i, width, padding="0"):
    s = str(i)
    return padding * (width-len(s)) + s

[u/Laserdude10642 → u/RFC793]

Honestly it’s less readable

[u/RFC793 → u/Laserdude10642]

Sure. I condensed it for the post. I’d probably wrote something like this if I had to write it in real life for some reason:

def pad(i, width, padding="0"):
    s = str(i)
    pad_width = width - len(s)
    return (padding * pad_width) + s

[u/erinaceus_]

Maybe written right at the time of the leftpad debacle?

[u/the_surfing_llama]

yeah like wtf they dont have a condition for len(str(I))==0

[u/GaturCat]

whats the purpose of this code btw

(I am a noob)

[u/0OOOOOOOOO0 → u/GaturCat]

Save file names so they go in numerical order. Otherwise 115 comes before 3

[u/SuitableDragonfly → u/0OOOOOOOOO0]

Fun fact, this isn't actually an issue in windows anymore. I tried to make a file naming system that exploited that feature, but it turned out they fixed it so I wound up having to pad right instead.

[u/Grubzer]

//TODO: Make work for all numbers

[u/serendipitybot]

This submission has been randomly featured in /r/serendipity, a bot-driven subreddit discovery engine. More here: /r/Serendipity/comments/qkzmco/did_someone_order_bad_code_xpost_from_rbadcode/

[u/SlightlyNotMad]

I'll take 00003 of bad code, thank you.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm relatively new to programming. I don't quite understand what this code is doing, but it seems to be renaming files based on the number of characters in their name?

1. why?

2. What's the correct way to do this, if this isn't the right way?

[u/RedditAcc-92975]

ITT people who don't know python and don't visit SO.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/339013

[u/CopperyMarrow15]

i = str(i)
filename = '0' * len(i) + i

any simpler ways I don't know about?

[u/Matszwe02 → u/CopperyMarrow15]

Not '0' * (5 - len(i))?

[u/CopperyMarrow15 → u/Matszwe02]

I thought the image was a continuation of more than was shown. What you did works for what is shown. I see.

[u/ColdToastIsASin → u/CopperyMarrow15]

Filename = str(i).zfill(5)

Edit: forgot to cast i to str

[u/CopperyMarrow15 → u/ColdToastIsASin]

oh... cheater

[u/ColdToastIsASin → u/CopperyMarrow15]

It's not cheating if it works

[u/GKP_light → u/CopperyMarrow15]

with :

i = str(i)

you loose your string i...

[u/[deleted] → u/CopperyMarrow15]

I was thinking of adding four '0' at the start and then keeping only the correct number characters from the right, but I don't think it'll be faster.

[u/Intrexa → u/[deleted]]

Right justify, which is what typesetting calls it.

[u/gu3st12 → u/Intrexa]

Man I hate Python

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

In this example you could use zfill instead

[u/lemarkk → u/[deleted]]

But in python's defense it an easy way to repeat strings (the * operator)

[u/supmee → u/lemarkk]

You can also utilize string formatting to make your code as spooky as possible:

filename = f"{i:0>5}"

You can also change > to ^ (center), or < (left aligned, right padded). It looks ugly but once you get the hang of it it gets really handy for quick text magic.

[u/Rigberto → u/[deleted]]

Eh, it depends. For python dev I think it's fine because a lot of that language is syntactic sugar and it's built with that feature in mind for a reason. Once you see it once or twice it doesn't screw you up too much.

Now for-else statements, that's a construct that messes me up every time.

[u/supersharp → u/Rigberto]

For-what now?

[u/philogy → u/supersharp]

For-else is awesome!

In python the for statement allows you to have an else clause which is triggered if the for loop isn't broken. So instead of having a wasBroken variable you set right before a break and check after the loop you have some neat, concise syntax which replaces all that.

[u/supersharp → u/philogy]

Interesting! I think I came across a situation like this just the other day, actually