Problem scenario
You are taking a slice of a Python string. You know that syntax like var_x[-2:] signifies the penultimate character and the last character of a string (called var_x). But you are only seeing one character — not two. You expect to see two (or a different number of characters than what you are seeing). Why is the snippet printing out fewer characters than you expect?

Possible Solution #1
There could be an invisible “\n” attached to the string (e.g.,

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Continue reading “How Do You Troubleshoot String Manipulation with List Slicing Not Working as You Expect?”

Problem scenario
You want to install gRPC and configure it for Python. How do you do this?

Solution
Prerequisites
You have installed pipe and venv. If you need assistance installing pip, see this posting for Ubuntu/Debian or this posting for a Red Hat derivative (e.g., RHEL, Stream, CentOS, Fedora) or this posting for SUSE.

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Continue reading “How Do You Install gRPC for Python on a Linux Server?”

Problem scenario
When a number of lines of text are read from a file, the Python program sees each line as such. When a number of lines of text are in the program itself, that is you use a multi-line variable assignment in a .py program, Python sees the characters individually and does not distinguish between the different lines. The len() function reflects these differences. You want the Python program to read the text in the program as if it were read from the “with open” and “readlines()” function line-by-line — not character-by-character.

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Continue reading “How Do You Get a Multi-line Variable in Python to Be Treated as Lines and Not Characters?”