On Sun, 13 Sep 2015 23:02:55 +0200, Laura Creighton wrote: > In a message of Sun, 13 Sep 2015 12:55:13 -0700, forums...@hotmail.com > writes: >> >>For starters, I googled and saw a plethora of writings on how to convert >>an entire list from string to float. My interest is on select elements >>in the list. The output from the print statement: print scenarioList >> >>is as follows >> >>[ '3000000', '"N"', '11400000', '"E"' ] >> >>I need to convert the first and third element to float. >> lat = ( float ) scenarioList [ 0 ] >> lon = ( float ) scenarioList [ 2 ] >> >>fails (invalid syntax). How can I achieve my objective. >> >>Thanks in advance > > Does this help? > >>>> l = [ '3000000', '"N"', '11400000', '"E"' ] >>>> [float(l[0]), l[1], float(l[2]), l[3]] > [3000000.0, '"N"', 11400000.0, '"E"']
Here's a method that will convert any value in a list that can be made a float into a float, and (I think) should leave all others as they are. It users a helper function and a list comprehension. >>> def tofloat(x): ... try: ... return float(x) ... except ValueError: ... return None ... >>> l = [ '3000000', '"N"', '11400000', '"E"' ] >>> l = [ tofloat(x) or x for x in l ] >>> l [3000000.0, '"N"', 11400000.0, '"E"'] -- Denis McMahon, denismfmcma...@gmail.com -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list