Question

So I am using writing this method, which work fine in term of looking up number but it only return last value. is there a way to make it so it return all the values after each run.
here is my code:

def searchPFAM():

    fileAddress = '/Volumes/interpro/data/Q14591.txt'
    start = None
    end = None
    with open(fileAddress,'rb') as f:
        root = etree.parse(f)
        for lcn in root.xpath("/protein/match[@dbname='PFAM']/lcn"):#find dbname =PFAM
            start = int(lcn.get("start"))#if it is PFAM then look for start value
            end = int(lcn.get("end"))#if it is PFAM then also look for end value
            print start, end
        return start, end

Answer 1

Do you mean something similar to this?

def do_something(fname):
    with open(fname,'rb') as f:
        root = etree.parse(f)
        for lcn in root.xpath("/protein/match[@dbname='PFAM']/lcn"):#find dbname =PFAM
            # Make slightly more robust
            try:
                start = int(lcn.get("start"))#if it is PFAM then look for start value
                end = int(lcn.get("end"))#if it is PFAM then also look for end value
                yield start, end
            except (TypeError , ValueError) as e:
                pass # start/end aren't usable as numbers decide what to do here...

for start, end in do_something():
    do_something_else(start, end)