Python ASCII-Art Text Generator

_____    _____   _____   _____              _____    _______
      /\      / ____|  / ____| |_   _| |_   _|     /\     |  __ \  |__   __|
     /  \    | (___   | |        | |     | |      /  \    | |__) |    | |
    / /\ \    \___ \  | |        | |     | |     / /\ \   |  _  /     | |
   / ____ \   ____) | | |____   _| |_   _| |_   / ____ \  | | \ \     | |
  /_/    \_\ |_____/   \_____| |_____| |_____| /_/    \_\ |_|  \_\    |_|

As a part of a console utilities module that I'm building, the central function (after which the module is named) is a function that generates ASCII art representation of given text.

Any comments or suggestions for improvement will be great!

default_conf = open('C://Programs//Python35//Lib//asciiart.txt').read()

...

def asciiart (text, conf=default_conf):
    """Produces an ascii art representation of text using the conf data"""

    if isinstance(conf, str): conf = conf.split('\n')

    height, key, data = int(conf[0]), conf[1], conf[2:]
    figures = dict(map(lambda x: (x, data[key.index(x) * height : key.index(x) * height + height]), key))
    art = '\n'.join(['\n'.join([' '.join([figures[x][i] for x in t.lower() if x in figures]) for i in range(height)]) for t in text.split('\n')])

    return art

Here is a demo:

>>> import asciiart
>>> print(asciiart.asciiart('code-review'))
  _____    ____    _____    ______          _____    ______  __      __  _____   ______  __          __
 / ____|  / __ \  |  __ \  |  ____|        |  __ \  |  ____| \ \    / / |_   _| |  ____| \ \        / /
| |      | |  | | | |  | | | |__     ____  | |__) | | |__     \ \  / /    | |   | |__     \ \  /\  / /
| |      | |  | | | |  | | |  __|   |____| |  _  /  |  __|     \ \/ /     | |   |  __|     \ \/  \/ /
| |____  | |__| | | |__| | | |____         | | \ \  | |____     \  /     _| |_  | |____     \  /\  /
 \_____|  \____/  |_____/  |______|        |_|  \_\ |______|     \/     |_____| |______|     \/  \/

The configuration file form

Style

You’ve already been told that by @alexwlchan in your previous question but: "whitespace is cheap" and it improves readability a lot. Compare your code to:

def asciiart(text, conf=default_conf):
    """Produces an ascii art representation of text using the conf data"""
    if isinstance(conf, str):
        conf = conf.split('\n')

    height, key, data = int(conf[0]), conf[1], conf[2:]
    figures = dict(map(
        lambda x: (x, data[key.index(x) * height: (key.index(x) + 1) * height]),
        key))
    art = '\n'.join([
        '\n'.join([
            ' '.join([figures[x][i] for x in t.lower() if x in figures])
            for i in range(height)])
        for t in text.split('\n')])
    return art

Again, you should also consider using generator expressions rather than list-comprehensions to feed into your join calls: turn those square brackets into parenthesis.

Handling font configuration

First of, when reading the file, you should remember to close it:

with open('C://Programs//Python35//Lib//asciiart.txt') as configuration_file:
    default_conf = configuration_file.read()

You may also want to name the resulting string DEFAULT_CONF as it is a constant.

Second, why parse this string at each call of asciiart? You should provide a function that will do the parsing and asciiart will only be responsible of using the parsed configuration:

ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION = {}

def parse_ascii_art_configuration(filename='C://Programs//Python35//Lib//asciiart.txt'):
    with open(filename) as f:
        conf = f.read().split('\n')
    height, key, data = int(conf[0]), conf[1], conf[2:]
    figures = dict(map(
        lambda x: (x, data[key.index(x) * height: (key.index(x) + 1) * height]),
        key))
    ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION.update(figures)

def asciiart(text):
    if not ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION:
        parse_ascii_art_configuration()

    art = '\n'.join(
        '\n'.join(
            ' '.join(ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION[x][i]
                     for x in t.lower() if x in ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION)
            for i in range(height))
        for t in text.split('\n'))
    return art

The advantage being:

• You give your users direct access to the underlying ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION that they can populate the way they want if need be;

• You give your users an easy way to provide their own configuration filepaths;

• You parse the configuration only once.

Obviously, this version wont work since asciiart does not have access to height any more. Time to bring our old friend zip (or itertools.zip_longest) back:

from itertools import zip_longest

def asciiart(text):
    if not ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION:
        parse_ascii_art_configuration()

    art = '\n'.join(
        '\n'.join(
            ' '.join(row)
            for row in zip_longest(
                (ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION[x]
                 for x in t.lower() if x in ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION),
                fillvalue=''))
        for t in text.split('\n'))
    return art

Better iterations

Now that we have a better API, let's focus a bit more on the code:

-
iteration over a file can be made using either the "reading" API or the iterator one, this can help better handle the separation of each part:

with open(filename) as f:
    height = int(next(f))
    keys = next(f)
    data = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in f]

-
building of the figure dictionary can be made more efficient using the grouper recipe from itertools:

def grouper(iterable, n):
    "Collect data into fixed-length chunks or blocks"
    # grouper('ABCDEFG', 3) --> ABC DEF G"
    args = [iter(iterable)] * n
    return zip_longest(*args, fillvalue='')

def parse_ascii_art_configuration(filename='C://Programs//Python35//Lib//asciiart.txt'):
    with open(filename) as f:
        height = int(next(f))
        keys = next(f)
        data = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in f]

    figures = {
        character: list(group)
        for character, group in zip(keys, grouper(data, height))
    }
    ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION.update(figures)

-
now that we use zip_longest to concatenate ascii-art letters, you can simplify handling missing symbols by turning ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION into a collections.defaultdict:

ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION = defaultdict(list)

def asciiart(text):
    if not ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION:
        parse_ascii_art_configuration()

    return '\n'.join(
              '\n'.join(
                  ' '.join(row)
                  for row in zip_longest(
                      (ASCII_ART_CONFIGURATION[x] for x in line_of_text),
                      fillvalue=''))
              for line_of_text in text.lower().splitlines())

StackExchange Code Review Q#145148, answer score: 7