simplify code using a list in python

Question

I have a line of python code that basically asigns a integer to a string (one letter). Since I use if statements, it need a lot of code lines... Is there a way I could simplify my code using a list so that it doesn't take up 63 lines of code? Here's my code:

if character in " ":
    character = 0
elif character in "Aa":
    character = 1
elif character in "Bb":
    character = 2
elif character in "Cc":
    character = 3
elif character in "Dd":
    character = 4
elif character in "Ee":
    character = 5
elif character in "Ff":
    character = 6
elif character in "Gg":
    character = 7
elif character in "Hh":
    character = 8
elif character in "Ii":
    character = 9
elif character in "Jj":
    character = 10
elif character in "Kk":
    character = 11
elif character in "Ll":
    character = 12
elif character in "Mm":
    character = 13
elif character in "Nn":
    character = 14
elif character in "Oo":
    character = 15
elif character in "Pp":
    character = 16
elif character in "Qq":
    character = 17
elif character in "Rr":
    character = 18
elif character in "Ss":
    character = 19
elif character in "Tt":
    character = 20
elif character in "Uu":
    character = 21
elif character in "Vv":
    character = 22
elif character in "Ww":
    character = 23
elif character in "Xx":
    character = 24
elif character in "Yy":
    character = 25
elif character in "Zz":
    character = 26
elif character in ".":
    character = 27
elif character in ",":
    character = 28
elif character in "?":
    character = 29
elif character in "'":
    character = 30
else:
    character = 0

Answer 1

Put all of the characters into one big string where the characters' positions in that string are the values you want to assign. You can handle upper and lowercase letters by converting the input to lowercase first.

value = " abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.,?'".find(character.lower())

Answer 2

You can Simply set range by setting ASCII value using ord() function and then find index using index() function.

TestCase='T'

# Make all Input to lowercase.

TestCase=TestCase.lower()


#calculate ASCII value of all lower character String

RangeVariable=range(ord('a'),ord('z'))

#Now Returning required Index value by comparing ASCII value of Testcase with that in RangVariable


print(RangeVariable.index(ord(TestCase)))