Parse a delimited inventory line

Python data engineering interview problem. Difficulty: beginner. Pattern: Strings. About 10 minutes. Free to practice.

Inventory comes in as one delimited line from a handheld scanner. You need named fields, not a raw string, before it can land in a warehouse table.

Inventory arrives as one line of text per product, with the fields separated by a pipe |. The system needs a dictionary with the right types. Split the line into sku, name, qty and price. Keep sku and name as text, turn qty into an integer and price into a decimal number (float). Return a dictionary. Write parse_inventory_line(line). 'SKU-1|widget|12|3.5' becomes {'sku': 'SKU-1', 'name': 'widget', 'qty': 12, 'price': 3.5}. 'A|x|0|0' gives qty 0 and price 0.0. The starter file already has the function name and its print lines. Keep them and fill in the body.

Requirements

• Split the line on | into 4 fields.
• qty must be an int.
• price must be a float.
• Return a dictionary with the keys sku, name, qty, price.

Constraints

• Each line has exactly 4 fields.
• Numbers are written as plain digits, with an optional decimal point.

Examples

Input: parse_inventory_line('SKU-1|widget|12|3.5') Output: {'sku': 'SKU-1', 'name': 'widget', 'qty': 12, 'price': 3.5} This input follows the stated rules and produces this output.

Topics: lakebench, python, parsing.

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