[Python 3.1]
Edit: mistake in the original code.
I need to print a table. The first row should be a header, which consists of column names separated by tabs. The following rows should contain the data (also tab-separated).
To clarify, let's say I have columns "speed", "power", "weight". I originally wrote the following code, with the help from a related question I asked earlier:
column_names = ['speed', 'power', 'weight']
def f(row_number):
# some calculations here to populate variables speed, power, weight
# e.g., power = retrieve_avg_power(row_number) * 2.5
# e.g., speed = math.sqrt(power) / 2
# etc.
locals_ = locals()
return {x : locals_[x] for x in column_names}
def print_table(rows):
print(*column_names, sep = '\t')
for row_number in range(rows):
row = f(row_number)
print(*[row[x] for x in component_names], sep = '\t')
But then I learned that I should avoid using locals()
if possible.
Now I'm stuck. I don't want to type the list of all the column names more than once. I don't want to rely on the fact that every dictionary I create inside f()
is likely to iterate through its keys in the same order. And I don't want to use locals()
.
Note that the functions print_table()
and f()
do a lot of other stuff; so I have to keep them separate.
How should I write the code?