Python Jumpstart by Building 10 Apps Transcripts
Chapter: App 8: File Searcher App
Lecture: Improved search results

Learn more about this course
Login or purchase this course to watch this video and the rest of the course contents.
0:00 So it's time to improve the results that come out of here,
0:03 remember, we are just passing the actual lines of a bunch of files,
0:06 we don't really even know which ones those are,
0:09 we just start with the folder that have some kind of match,
0:11 so we want to bundle some information together about these matches,
0:14 now we could use classes and those are very powerful,
0:17 but really we just need things like what's the line number,
0:20 what's the text, what's the file name and so on.
0:23 So it turns out named tuples are perfect, so again,
0:27 we'll just use our collections of a SearchResult =
0:31 we want to use our collections.namedtuple()
0:34 and then the first thing is the type name
0:38 the second argument are basically the fields
0:42 so it will be file, file line and text,
0:45 let's say those are the three things that we are going to return there.
0:50 Now let's change this, so not just append a line but actually make results,
0:54 so we'll say m for match it's going to be a SearchResults()
0:59 and in here what are we going to add,
1:01 we want to say line = line I think I called it and file = filename
1:07 and the text = ... actually, text = line, that's the line of text
1:14 and I need the line number here,
1:18 so we have to compute this ourselves so way we are doing it but that's ok,
1:24 ok, so now we are going to append that and let's just run it again,
1:27 remember, these named tuples have decent output, ok,
1:31 we are going to search our books again,
1:33 and we are going to search for the word friends,
1:36 and here are a bunch of matches that have way more information,
1:39 so you can see we have the file is the Ulysses book
1:43 and these are the lines and we also have Tales of Two Cities and The Doll House,
1:46 they all talk about friends.
1:49 Ok, that works, but let's do a little bit nicer output so we can read it here,
1:52 let's go at the top where we are doing this print and for a little bit let's go ok, stop this,
1:58 what we are going to do is we are going to say print()
2:00 and we'll do something like this, there is a match
2:04 ok so we'll say match then we'll print out the file, the line and the actual match text,
2:09 let's run it again.
2:11 Same folder, this time let's search for happiness.
2:16 All right, so we have some matches,
2:18 it turns out in Ulysses on line 20899 rule of happiness of the better land- yes,
2:24 this is a much nicer output.
2:27 Now, something is funny like there is two lines here,
2:30 and yet we are only doing like one print on this
2:35 which is kind of unusual what is going on,
2:37 remember, when we read an individual line from the files
2:40 they actually have the new line on there so that new line is appearing here
2:44 and I'd rather take more control over the text rather than assume that
2:47 that's always going to be there so let's just say strip(),
2:50 now it could do an rstrip() just to get the stuff off the end or maybe
2:54 if there is white space you want to pull it to the font, anyway so let's do it this way.
3:00 Great, it looks like our searching is working perfectly.
3:07 Now remember, we are giving it this folder
3:09 and it turns out we are searching these files
3:11 but we are not searching Dracula or Adventure of Sherlock Holmes,
3:17 or anything like that, let's just prove that,
3:19 we come over here and say I want to search for Holmes,
3:23 well, Ulysses apparently has some place that talks about Sherlock Holmes
3:28 but we are not getting into that subdirectory.
3:31 And this is to be expected because we said if it's a directory ignore it,
3:35 there is a variety of ways in which we could solve this problem
3:38 but it turns out the most natural way to solve these hierarchical problems are
3:43 to use something called recursion,
3:45 so let's take a moment and go look at this concept
3:47 and then we'll come back and apply ti to our application.