Need help with hiding a list with a *

Python Help
1

I have a list, would like to know how to hide the elements with a *

thanks
henry

2

What do you mean by “hide the elements”?

3

Hello,

I don’t know how flexible you are, but you can potentially use a class to both encapsulate and “hide” the original list by creating a copy but replacing the list elements with asterisks *. Note that the example that I have provided is very basic in nature. You can of course use it along with an encryption module to really enrypt the actual elements in the list (self.__data_list). The idea is that you have two versions: One for the world to see and the other that is private and only accesible by you via a method call.

# Assuming this is the data obtained in your script for 'hiding'
orig_data = ['today', 'tomorrow', 'yesterday', 1, 2, 3]

class Asterisk_Encrypt:

    asterisk_list = []           # Hide data with '*'

    def __init__(self, data):
        self.__data_list = data  # Keep original data
        self.list_encrypt()      # At instantiation, immediately hide data

    def list_encrypt(self):

        for add_data in self.__data_list:

            if type(add_data) == str:
                Asterisk_Encrypt.asterisk_list.append('*' * len(add_data))
            else:
                Asterisk_Encrypt.asterisk_list.append('*' * 5)

    def get_data(self):
        return self.__data_list

    def del_index(self, index):

        del(self.__data_list[index])
        del(Asterisk_Encrypt.asterisk_list[index])


# Pass your list to class
My_List = Asterisk_Encrypt(orig_data)

# Fetch and print '*' encrypted list (what you want the world to see)
print('\n', My_List.asterisk_list, sep='')

# Fetch original data via class method (not directly via attribute qualification)
print(My_List.get_data())

# Delete index 2 element (as an example)
My_List.del_index(2)

# Fetch and print '*' encrypted list (what you want the world to see)
print('\n', My_List.asterisk_list, sep='')

# Fetch original data via class method (not directly via attribute qualification)
print(My_List.get_data())

When you run this script, you get:

# When you first instantiate the class with your original list
['*****', '********', '*********', '*****', '*****', '*****']
['today', 'tomorrow', 'yesterday', 1, 2, 3]

# After you have deleted an element (#2) 
['*****', '********', '*****', '*****', '*****']
['today', 'tomorrow', 1, 2, 3]

To make it more robust, you can add an encryption module to encrypt your list (self.__data_list). There are encryption modules that you can quickly look up for immediate use.

One potential package (others are of course available):

4

Thank you to all who are helping me, to


Paul onePythonUser
April 12 |

  • |

major effort from you, thanks, I am going to study your code to understand it better

jhenry

5

This might help. I do not know how to “hide” elements in a list. They are either in the list or they are not. This code removes elements in a list that begin with a ‘#’, ie. commented items.

I use this to ignore commented lines in data files.

mylist = ['one', '#two', 'three', 'five', '6six']
filtered_list = [item for item in mylist if not item.startswith('#')]
print(filtered_list)