Python is a widely-used general-purpose, high-level programming language. Python programs generally are smaller than other programming languages like Java. Programmers have to type relatively less and indentation requirements of the language makes them readable all the time. However, Python programs can be made more concise using some one-liner codes. These can save time by having less code to type.
Refer to the below articles to know more about Python.
Python basics
One-Liners in Python
One-Liner #1: To input space separated integers in a list: Suppose you want to take space separated input from the console and you want to convert it into List. To do this map() function can be used that takes int() method and input().split() methods as parameter. Here the int() method is used for conversion of input to int type and input().split() methods are used to take input from the console and split the input by spaces. Below is the implementation.
lis = list(map(int, input().split()))
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Note: To know more about Python map() function click here. One-Liner #2: To input a 2-D matrix(When the entries are given row-wise): The most naive method that comes in mind while taking a input for 2-D matrix is given below.
# Input for row and columnR = int(input())
C = int(input())
matrix = []
# for loop for row entries for i in range(R):
a =[]
# for loop for column entries
for j in range(C):
a.append(int(input()))
matrix.append(a)
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The above code can be written in one-line that is way more concise and saves time especially for competitive programmers.
# Input for row and columnR = int(input())
C = int(input())
# Using list comprehension for inputmatrix = [[int(input()) for x in range (C)] for y in range(R)]
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One-Liner #3: We know this fact, but sometimes we tend to ignore it while translating from other languages. It is swapping of two numbers. The most naive way of doing this is:
temp = a
a = b
b = temp
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However, Python provides one-liner for this also. The Pythonic way is:
# to swap two numbers a and ba, b = b, a
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One-Liner #4 Lambda Functions(Anonymous Functions) – Lambda functions are python one liner functions and are often used when an expression is to be evaluated. For example, let’s suppose we want to create a function that returns the square of the number passed as argument. The normal way of doing this is:
def sqr(x):
return x * x
print(sqr(5))
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25
Lambda function replaces a function wherever a single expression is to be evaluated.
sqr = lambda x: x * x
print(sqr(5))
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25
One-Liner #5 List comprehensions – This is a concise way to create lists. Instead of doing it the usual way, we can make use of list comprehensions. For example, we want to create a list of even numbers till 11. The normal way of doing this is:
evenNumbers =[]
for x in range(11):
if x % 2 == 0:
evenNumbers.append(x)
print(evenNumbers)
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[0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
The pythonic way:
evenNumbers =[x for x in range(11) if x % 2 == 0]
print(evenNumbers)
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[0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
One-Liner #6: This trick may help while using if-else or while loop. Instead of doing this –
if m == 1 or m == 2 or m == 3:
pass
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We can code it as:
if m in [1, 2, 3]:
pass
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One-Liner #7: There are various ways to reverse a list in python. Pythonic ways to reverse a list:
- Using the slicing technique- This technique creates the copy of the list while reversing. It takes up more memory.
lis = [1, 2, 3]
reversed_list = lis[::-1]
print(reversed_list)
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[3, 2, 1]
- Using the reverse function- It reverse the contents of the list object in-place.
lis = [1, 2, 3]
lis.reverse()print(lis)
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[3, 2, 1]
One-Liner #8: You can take this as a challenge. Making one-liner python patterns. For example, Make the following code concise to one line.
for i in range(0, 5):
for j in range(0, i + 1):
# printing stars
print("* ", end ="")
# ending line after each row
print("\r")
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Output:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Concise all this in one line is fun.
n = 5
# one liner code for half pyramid patternprint('\n'.join('* ' * i for i in range(1, n + 1)))
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
One-Liner #9 Finding the factorial. The normal way of finding a factorial is iterating till that number and multiplying the number in each iteration.
n = 5
fact = 1
for i in range(1, n + 1):
fact = fact * i
print (fact)
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120
We can use math.factorial(x)- It returns the factorial of x. But it raises Value error if number is negative or non-integral.
import math
n = 5
print(math.factorial(n))
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120
One more way to do find the factorial concisely is by using reduce() and lambda function.
import functools
n = 5
print(functools.reduce(lambda x, y: x * y, range(1, n + 1)))
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120
One-Liner #10: Finding all subsets of a set in one line. Usual way takes a lot of hard work and can be seen here. It can be done in a much simpler way using itertools.combinations()
from itertools import combinations
# list of all subsets of # length r (r = 2 in this example) print(list(combinations([1, 2, 3, 4], 2)))
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[(1, 2), (1, 3), (1, 4), (2, 3), (2, 4), (3, 4)]
One-Liner #11: Read file in python and input it to a list.
file = open('gfg.txt', 'r')
lis =[]
for each in file:
# removing '\n' from the end of the string
a = each[:-1]
lis.append(a)
file.close()
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One liner code is:
lis = [line.strip() for line in open('gfg.txt', 'r')]
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One-Liner #11: Loops through a list of words and returns a new list containing all elements that are present on the given string. To better explain the code I recommend you to open this A good use case for this code is as a basic profanity filter. Change the list into a list of vulgar words and use the one liner function to check all user input for vulgar words through this code.
#: sample listlist = ['hello', 'welcome', 'guest', 'show']
#: sample stringsentence = "Hello world! Im here to show you a word filter"
#: print all words in list that are present in sentenceprint([word for word in list if word in ("".join(word for word in sentence.lower() if word.isalpha() or word.isnumeric() or word == " ")).split(" ")])
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['hello', 'show']