Eliminate all non latins words from a list of strings

Asked Mar 28 '21 at 14:30

Active Mar 28 '21 at 14:58

Viewed 36 times

can someone please tell me why is my list not empty?

#Function that verify if a word is a latin word (delivers true) or not (delivers false)
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

def is_latin(word):
try:
    word.encode(encoding='utf-8').decode('ascii')
except UnicodeDecodeError :
    print(word) # for debugging purposes
    return False
else:
    return True

# Function to eliminate a latin word from a given List of Strings

def eliminate_non_latin(initial_list):
for element in initial_list:
    if not is_latin(element):
        initial_list.remove(element)
return initial_list

#Testing the two functions

Test=['幸福','المغرب']
print(eliminate_non_latin(Test))

Output:

幸福 ====> is_latin function works fine (Debugging)

['المغرب'] ====> here's my problem this list should be empty!

Am i missing something?

edited Mar 28 '21 at 14:56

asked Mar 28 '21 at 14:30

Lahmidi Mustapha

1

yes the first output was just for debugging purposes. It triggers the except clause but the second output is the resulted list. It should be empty since the two words are not latin words. – Lahmidi Mustapha Mar 28 '21 at 14:53
1

The problem is that you are mutating the list as you iterate over it. First loop you remove an item, now the list is length 1 so the loop terminates. – snakecharmerb Mar 28 '21 at 14:55
1

The links in the duplicate notice should explain what's going on more clearly, and how to handle the situation correctly. – snakecharmerb Mar 28 '21 at 14:59
Yes of course! thank you so much. – Lahmidi Mustapha Mar 28 '21 at 15:00

Eliminate all non latins words from a list of strings

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