Question

I need to convert a string of numbers into a string of letters to form words
Example:
if the input to your program is
1920012532082114071825463219200125320615151209190846 it should return
stay hungry. stay foolish.

I have this so far:

def number ():
output = []
input = raw_input ("please enter a string of numbers: ")
for number in input:
    if number <= 26:
        character = chr(int(number+96))
        output.append(character)
    else:
        character = chr(int(number))
        output.append(character)
print output

I need it to somehow determine that every two numbers equals one letter.
I have a program that does the reverse of this, outputs numbers when given letter. this is what that looks like:

def word ():
output = []
input = raw_input("please enter a string of lowercase characters: ")
for character in input:
    number = ord(character) - 96
    if number > 0:
        if number <= 9:
            output.append('0' + str(number))
        else:
            output.append(str(number))
    else:
        output.append(str(number + 96))
print ''.join(output)

Thanks for the help

Answer 1

You can split up the str into two-character chunks using zip() and slicing with a step like this:

for pair in zip(input[::2], input[1::2]):
    number = "".join(pair)

I’d write the whole thing like this:

def int_str_to_chr_str(int_str):
    res = []
    for pair in zip(int_str[::2], int_str[1::2]):
        number = int("".join(pair))

        if number <= 26:
            number += 96

        res.append(chr(number))

    return "".join(res)

print int_str_to_chr_str("1920012532082114071825463219200125320615151209190846")

It’s more useful to have the logic separated from input and output, so you can use the function in other parts of a program. It’s also a good idea to avoid repeating the use of names like number or input (which is a built-in).