Convert alphabet letters to number in Python

Question

How can the following be finished?

characters = [\'a\'\'b\'\'c\'\'d\'\'e\'\'f\'\'g\'\'h\'\'i\'\'j\'\'k\'\'l\'\'m\'\'n\'\'o\'\'p\'\'q\'\'r\'\'t\'\'u\'\'v\'\'w         


        

Answer 1

If you are going to use this conversion a lot, consider calculating once and putting the results in a dictionary:

>>> import string
>>> di=dict(zip(string.letters,[ord(c)%32 for c in string.letters]))
>>> di['c'] 
3

The advantage is dictionary lookups are very fast vs iterating over a list on every call.

>>> for c in sorted(di.keys()):
>>>    print "{0}:{1}  ".format(c, di[c])
# what you would expect....