[GRASS-dev] Copying Landsat MTL file(s) inside the cell_misc directory -- Python scripting

[Nikos Alexandris]

Pietro wrote:

> > > I know the following is a pure python question -- still, can someone
> > > shed some light on why is there such a difference between
> > > 
> > >     if 'DATE_ACQUIRED' or 'ACQUISITION_DATE' in line:
> > > and
> > > 
> > >     if 'DATE_ACQUIRED' in line or 'ACQUISITION_DATE' in line:
> > > ?
> > 
> > Your error is due to the precedence of the operator, what it is really
> > written in the first row is:
> 
> > if ( ('DATE_ACQUIRED') or ('ACQUISITION_DATE' in line) ):

Glynn wrote:

> It's not just the precedence, but also the semantics of the "or" and
> "in" operators. If the first expression had been parenthesised
> according to the presumed intent of the expression, i.e.:
> 
> 	if ('DATE_ACQUIRED' or 'ACQUISITION_DATE') in line:
> 
> the result would have been equivalent to:
> 
> 	if 'DATE_ACQUIRED' in line:
> 
> as the "or" operator returns the first argument if it is considered
> true and the second argument otherwise. As all non-empty strings are
> considered true, the "or" operator would have simply returned the
> left-hand string, which would be used as the argument to the "in"
> operator.

This explains why time-stamping did not work correctly, in the script 
mentioned in the first post of this thread, when parsing an old(er) Landsat 
metadata file (i.e. LE71610762013070PFS00_MTLold.txt which contains the string 
'ACQUISITION_DATE').

> In general: False, None, 0, 0.0, the empty string and any empty
> container (list, tuple, set, dictionary) are considered false, while
> most other values are considered true (classes can customise their
> behaviour by defining __nonzero__ or __len__ methods).
> 
> The "in" operator uses the __contains__ method of the right-hand
> argument, i.e. "x in y" evalutes "y.__contains__(x)". For lists,
> tuples and sets, "x in y" is true if x is an element of the list or
> set; for dictionaries, "x in y" is true if x is a key in the
> dictionary y. For strings, the expression is true if the left-hand
> argument is a substring of the right-hand argument.
> 
> If you want to find out whether any one of a number of candidates are
> contained within an object, you need to explicitly iterate over them,
> e.g.:
> 
> 	if any(x in line for x in ('DATE_ACQUIRED', 'ACQUISITION_DATE')):

Works with any MTL file now, i.e. with both the LE71610762013070PFS00_MTL.txt 
and the old(er) LE71610762013070PFS00_MTLold.txt Landsat metadata files.

Thanks, Nikos