[Yegg`]

I'm hav a bit of a problem organizing my lists properly. Can someone show me a better way to make this code work?

if not os.path.isfile('languages.dat'):
    create = open('languages.dat', 'w')
    create.close()
    file = open('languages.dat', 'a')
    file.write('English\n')
    file.write('Spanish\n')
    file.write('French\n')
    file.write('Italian\n')
    file.write('Portuguese\n')
    file.write('German\n')
    file.write('Russian\n')
    file.close()
else:
    pass
langs = open ( 'languages.dat' )
langslist = langs.readlines()
for item in langslist:
    item = item.replace('\n', '')
    LangList.append(item)
for item in LangList:
    print item
language = raw_input('Select a Language: ')
if language.lower() == LangList[0]:
    E[0] = 'True'
    S[0] = 'False'
    F[0] = 'False'
    I[0] = 'False'
    P[0] = 'False'
    G[0] = 'False'
    R[0] = 'False'
elif language.lower() == LangList[1]:
    E[0] = 'False'
    S[0] = 'True'
    F[0] = 'False'
    I[0] = 'False'
    P[0] = 'False'
    G[0] = 'False'
    R[0] = 'False'
elif language.lower() == LangList[2]:
    E[0] = 'False'
    S[0] = 'False'
    F[0] = 'True'
    I[0] = 'False'
    P[0] = 'False'
    G[0] = 'False'
    R[0] = 'False'
elif language.lower() == LangList[3]:
    E[0] = 'False'
    S[0] = 'False'
    F[0] = 'False'
    I[0] = 'True'
    P[0] = 'False'
    G[0] = 'False'
    R[0] = 'False'
elif language.lower() == LangList[4]:
    E[0] = 'False'
    S[0] = 'False'
    F[0] = 'False'
    I[0] = 'False'
    P[0] = 'True'
    G[0] = 'False'
    R[0] = 'False'
elif language.lower() == LangList[5]:
    E[0] = 'False'
    S[0] = 'False'
    F[0] = 'False'
    I[0] = 'False'
    P[0] = 'False'
    G[0] = 'True'
    R[0] = 'False'
elif language.lower() == LangList[6]:
    E[0] = 'False'
    S[0] = 'False'
    F[0] = 'False'
    I[0] = 'False'
    P[0] = 'False'
    G[0] = 'False'
    R[0] = 'True'
else:
    pass

After this is done, the following code will eventually be run, depending on if there are other users in the channel you enter.

    if E[0] == 'True':
        print "JOIN: "+username+", "+product
        Log("JOIN: "+username+", "+product)
    elif S[0] == 'True':
        print "ENSAMBLE: "+username+", "+product
        Log("ENSAMBLE: "+username+", "+product)
    elif F[0] == 'True':
        print "JOIGNEZ: "+username+", "+product
        Log("JOIGNEZ: "+username+", "+product)
    elif I[0] == 'True':
        print "UNISCASI: "+username+", "+product
        Log("UNISCASI: "+username+", "+product)
    elif P[0] == 'True':
        print "JUNTE: "+username+", "+product
        Log("JUNTE: "+username+", "+product)
    elif G[0] == 'True':
        print "VERBINDEN Sie: "+username+", "+product
        Log("VERBINDEN Sie: "+username+", "+product)
    elif R[0] == 'True':
        print "СОЕДИНИТЕ: "+username+", "+product
        Log("СОЕДИНИТЕ: "+username+", "+product)

E is English, S is Spanish, etc. That doesn't matter, but for some reason Python isn't printing out anything. It doesn't know what E[0] equals, S[0] equals, F[0] equals, etc. Can anyone help me out with this?

[jacktasia]

why are E, S etc lists? if you're only going to use the first element anyway, and do you ever declare it as a list E=[] etc? and why are you putting True and False in quotes as a string, just use True and False (without quotes) as their normal boolean value.

[hydroxide]

Truly horrible code
For the first part, the following code is much better:

import os
if not os.path.isfile('languages.dat'):
    languages = ["English", "Spanish", "French", "Italian", "Portuguese",
                 "German", "Russian"]
    open('languages.dat', 'w').write("\n".join(languages))
    
langlist = [lang.strip() for lang in open("languages.dat")]

For the second part, it's not so much a problem with organisation of lists as a problem with design. This is something like how I'd do it:

class Language(object):
    def __init__(self, name, jointxt):
        self.name = name
        self.jointxt = jointxt

    def log_product(self, username, product):
        txt = "%s: %s, %s"%(self.jointxt, username, product)
        print txt
        #... insert logging code here - eg LOG.write(txt)

langdict = {
               "English" : "JOIN",
               "Spanish" : "ENSAMBLE",
               "French" : "JOIGNEZ",
               #... insert other languages here
           }

while True:
    print "\n".join(langdict.keys())
    lang = raw_input('Select a Language: ').strip().title()
    if lang in langdict:
        break

mylang = Language(lang, langdict[lang])

#Then when the code needs to be run
mylang.log_product("hydroxide", "widgets")

Understanding is left as an exercise - use lots of print statements on various bits and pieces and the help() function in interactive mode.
--OH.

[Yegg`]

I think hydroxide understood my question more. jacktasia, I did have E = [], S = [], and so on. I had them equal 'True' or 'False' as the first item in the list so if it wus 'True', it was True, if it was 'False', it was False. You cant do if E[0] == False. That's what the quotes were used for, just to determine if they were being used or not. Thanks hydroxide.

[sfb]

Don't hard code the languages, it makes your code huge, repetetive and very difficult to expand for more languages if you need to.

Consider something like:

A file per language.
Each filename is the name of the language, e.g. french.lang, english.lang.

Each piece of text you need in a different language has a way of referring to it, such as "msg_join_channel", "msg_quit_channel", etc.

Each language file contains the referring code, then the text in that language, so:

English.lang:
msg_join_channel, User %s joined channel %s
msg_quit_channel, User %s quit channel %s

Latin.lang:
msg_join_channel, %s is here.
msg_quit_channel, Exit %s

Your code reads the chosen language file, looking for codes and builds a dictionary.
Where you need a message, you go to the language dictionary with that code.

e.g.
[code]
import os

# get the user to enter a language
lang = raw_input("Enter a language: ")
if not os.path.exists(lang_file):
print "Language file not found"

# Language dictionary
messages = {}

# Read the language text
for line in file(lang + '.lang'):
code, text = line.split(', ', 1)
messages

 = text

# ...

# Someone joins the channel
print messages['msg_join_channel'] % (username, product)

# Someone quits the channel
print messages['msg_quit_channel'] % (username, product)

(I have no idea how this would handle unicode or accented/etc characters).

You cant do if E[0] == False

Yes you can:

>>> E = [True]
>>> E
[True]
>>> E[0]
True
>>> E[0] == True
True
>>> E[0] == False
False
>>>