Code Fellows 401 Challenge Gist

gistfile1.txt

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

"""
Code Challenge for this morning, an exercise in matching things up.

Write a function 'matcher()', takes two arguments.  First is a string
with some parenthesies.  Second string should take pairs of characters
that should be matched, examples: "()" or "()[]" or "''" < single
quotes.  The inputs for matching will always be paired.

The return value of this function should be True or False, True if all
pairs of matching things above have a matching element, False otherwise.


"""

SOME_MATCHING_ELEMENTS = "{}[]()""''<>"


def matcher(input_string, matching_pairs):
    """takes a string input and a 'matcher' input of paired things, returns
    True if those matching things pair up and open/close properly, else
    it returns False."""
    counter = 0
    apostrophy_count = 0
    quote_count = 0
    separated_pairs = list(matching_pairs)
    left_pairs = separated_pairs[0:][::2]
    right_pairs = separated_pairs[1:][::2]
    sliced_input = list(input_string)

    for character in sliced_input:
        for match in left_pairs:
            if character == match:
                counter += 1
        for match in right_pairs:
            if character == match:
                counter -= 1

    if counter == 0:
        return True
    else:
        return False


"""
This is as far as I got..  It doesn't handle " or ' very well , I started to
give them their own counters and ran out of time.  It also doesn't
handle the ( [ ) ] problem, it passes in that case.  I'm really not sure how 
to make that fail at the moment.
"""