Question

I have a python method that takes a list of tuples of the form (string, float) and
returns a list of strings that, if combined, would not exceed a certain limit. I am not splitting sentences to preserve the output length, but making sure to stay within a sentence length from the desired output length.

For example:
s: [('Where are you',1),('What about the next day',2),('When is the next event',3)]

max_length : 5
output : 'Where are you What about the next day'

max_length : 3
output: 'Where are you'

This is what I am doing:

l=0
output = []
for s in s_tuples:
   if l <= max_length:
     output.append(s[0])
     l+=len(get_words_from(s[0]))
 return ''.join(output)

Is there a smarter way to make sure the output word length does not exceed max_length other than stopping when the length is reached?

Answer 1

One smarter way would be to break out of the loop as soon as you exceed max_length, that way you are not looping over the rest of the list for no reason:

for s in s_tuples:
    if l > max_length:
        break
    output.append(s[0])
    l += len(get_words_from(s[0]))
return ''.join(output)