Converting to a list and sort

[stullis]

There are a couple options. You could write a small closure and use map() to apply that function to each substring in split.

You could also use a list comprehension.

The easiest way though would be to make a list and call list.append to add the value to it.

def convert_ceiling(text):
    split = text.split()
    ceiling = []
    for s in split:
        if 'FEW' in s or 'OVC' in s or 'BKN' in s or 'SCT' in s:       
            ceiling.append(s.replace('FEW','').replace('OVC','').replace('BKN','').replace('SCT',''))

That last line is pretty gnarly. If you put those strings in a tuple and use str.find(), you can simplify:

def convert_ceiling(text):
    subs = ("FEW", "OVC", "BKN", "SCT")
    split = text.split()
    ceiling = []
    for s in split:
        for each in subs:
            if s.find(each) >= 0:
                ceiling.append(s.replace(each,''))

Based on the data provided in the earlier post, that should do the trick.