Auto increment of Concatenated alpha-numeric. (Python)

Question

I have defined a function that generates ID. I need to increment the numbers every time I call the function.

So I used max() function to find the last largest value stored in the list. According to the requirements my ID should also consist of a string in front of the integers.

So I have concatenated a string with some numbers which have been stored in a list.

Now my max() does not work,because after concatenating its converted into a alpha-numeric.Please help.I tried splitting the ID but that splits each character.

Following is the function I defined:

#!/usr/bin/python

from DB import *

def Sid():
        idlist = []

        for key in Accounts:
                if Accounts[key]['Acctype'] == 'Savings':
                        idlist.append(Accounts[key]['Accno'])

        if len(idlist) == 0:
                return 1001

        else:
                abc = max(idlist)
                return abc + 1

EDIT 1: Here is how I have called the function:

  accno = Sid()
  AppendRecord(Accno="SA"+str(accno))

Answer 1

You can strip off the numeric suffix from the string to get a number to increment:

import re

def number_suffix(s):
    """Return the number from the end of the string. """
    match = re.search(r"\d+$", s)
    if match:
        num = int(match.group(0))
    else:
        num = 0
    return num

print number_suffix("AS1001")    # 1001
print number_suffix("AS1")       # 1
print number_suffix("AS")        # 0

then change your function:

idlist.append(number_suffix(Accounts[key]['Accno']))