Create a function that takes each item in a list as argument iteratively

Question

The challenge is to use Python to create a function that takes in sub-lists of a list and applies the strip function to each sub-list iteratively. After that it rebuilds the list with the cleaned sub-lists

The input is a list of lists. Here is a sample:

tringles_new[:15]

[['49', 'XT', '19.0', '93 \n'],
 ['YTX', '124.0', '167 ', '77.0\n'],
 ['4 ', 'Y', '128,', '125,\n'],
 ['142.0', '120', '141.0\n'],
 ['12 ', '51.0\n'],
 ['0,', ' 82', '156\n'],
 ['82', '102.0\n'],
 ['94', 'YYZ', '178.0', '72\n'],
 [' 120', 'YXT', '142', ' 134\n'],
 ['45,', '46', '79.0\n'],
 [' 114', 'YT', '155.0', '168\n'],
 ['98,', '27,', '119.0\n'],
 ['61,', 'XYY', '33', '1\n'],
 ['ZY', '103', '123.0', '76\n'],
 ['YZZ', '52', ' 17', ' 92\n']]

The code I've written takes only a sub-list from tringles_new as an input and applies the strip function. How can I get the function to loop through all the sub-lists in tringles_new automatically?

def clean_one(i):
    clean_one_output = []
    for j in i:
        j = j.strip()
        clean_one_output.append(j)
    return clean_one_output

Answer 1

You need a function that call the clean_one for each sublist.

I made this function based on the implementation of your clean_one function. It can be improved but at least, I kept it simple for non-pythoneers.

Original Style

def clean_many(many):
    clean_many_output = []
    for i in many:
        clean_many_output.append(clean_one(i))
    return clean_many_output

Oneliner

def better_clean_many(many):
    return [[j.strip() for j in i] for i in many]

Inplace

def inplace_clean_many(many):
    for i in many:
        for index, j in enumerate(i):
            i[index] = j.strip()

Answer 2

Maybe you need a star for j

def clean_one(i):
    clean_one_output = []
    for j in i:
        j = *j
        clean_one_output.extend(j)
    return clean_one_output

or two for loops

def clean_one(i):
    clean_one_output = []
    for j in i:
        for k in j:
            clean_one_output.append(k)
    return clean_one_output

Answer 3

Here's a function func that takes in sublists of a list and returns the full list using closures. Not sure if this is what you want.

def outer():
    full_cleaned_list = []
    
    def inner(sublist):
        cleaned_sublist = [s.strip() for s in sublist]
        full_cleaned_list.append(cleaned_sublist)
        return full_cleaned_list

    return inner

func = outer()

result = [func(l) for l in tringles_new]