Parameter Expansion With Python

Question

I am trying to write a script takes a word and prints the first three characters, the last 3 characters, and whatever lies in the middle in dots:

abracabra

abr...bra

I made it work,

word = input("What's the word ?")
first = str(word[0:3])
last = str(word[-3:])
middle = int(len(word)-6)
midDOTS = "." * (middle)
print((first)+(midDOTS)+(last))

but I would like to do it on one line, like I can do in bash, for example this returns a list of network interfaces:

INTFACES=$(/sbin/ifconfig -a | sed 's/[ \t].*//;/^\(lo\|\)$/d') 

How do I do this with python? I tried this, but it did not work:

word = input("What's the word ?")
midDOTS = "." * (int(len(word)-6))
print(str(word[0:3])+(midDOTS)+ str(word[-3:]))

What is the correct syntax?

Edit

Thanks to everyone for helping me not only get this correct, but understand it as well. Here is what I ended up going with...

def print_dotted_word():
    word = str(input("What's the word ?"))
    if len(word)<7:
        raise ValueError("Needs to be at least 7 letters.")
    print(word[:3] + '.'*(len(word)-6) + word[-3:])

while True:
    try:
        print_dotted_word()
        break
    except ValueError:("Needs to be at least 7 letters.")

Answer 1

You can do the following:

word = input("What's the word ?")
if len(word)<7:
    raise ValueError("Please enter a word greater than 6 characters")
print(word[:3] + '.'*(len(word)-6) + word[-3:])

Here, we will raise a ValueError exception if the word entered is less than 7 characters.

We can check this in Python shell by enclosing this code in a function print_dotted_word() .

Python 2.7:

In [1]: def print_dotted_word():
            word = raw_input("What's the word ? \n") # use raw_input
            if len(word)<7: # check for word length
                raise ValueError("Please enter a word greater than 6 characters") # raise exception
            print word[:3] + '.'*(len(word)-6) + word[-3:] # print desired response

In [2]: print_dotted_word()
What's the word ? 
helloworld
hel....rld

In [3]: print_dotted_word()
What's the word ? 
hello
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
----> 1 print_dotted_word()
      2     word = raw_input("What's the word ? \n")
      3     if len(word)<7:
----> 4         raise ValueError("Please enter a word greater than 6 characters")
      5     print word[:3] + '.'*(len(word)-6) + word[-3:]

ValueError: Please enter a word greater than 6 characters

Python 3.4:

In [1]: def print_dotted_word():
            word = input("What's the word ? \n") # use input here
            if len(word)<7: # check for word length
                raise ValueError("Please enter a word greater than 6 characters") # raise exception 
            print(word[:3] + '.'*(len(word)-6) + word[-3:]) # print desired response

In [2]: print_dotted_word()
What's the word ? 
helloworld
hel....rld

In [3]: print_dotted_word()
What's the word ? 
hello
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
----> 1 print_dotted_word()
      2     word = input("What's the word ? \n")
      3     if len(word)<7:
----> 4         raise ValueError("Please enter a word greater than 6 characters")
      5     print(word[:3] + '.'*(len(word)-6) + word[-3:])
      6 
ValueError: Please enter a word greater than 6 characters