Arun Srinivasan wrote:
> I'm trying to learn Python, and I decided to try kata 2 </> from the
> CodeKate website. It's basically just a challenge to implement a
> binary search in different ways.
>
> I wrote an implementation that works, but I'm confused as to why.
>
> def chop(search_int, sorted_list):
> if len(sorted_list) == 1 or 2:
Yet another way to express that is:
if 1 <= len(sorted_list) <= 2:
> for x in sorted_list:
> if x == search_int:
> return sorted_list.index(x)
> return -1
>
> midpoint = (len(sorted_list) - 1) / 2
> mp_value = sorted_list[midpoint]
>
> if mp_value == search_int:
> return midpoint
> elif mp_value > search_int:
> return chop(search_int, sorted_list[:midpoint])
> else:
> return chop(search_int, sorted_list[midpoint + 1:])
>
> Basically, it only returns the index if it matches in the if statement
> at the beginning of the function, but since that is limited to lists
> of length 2 or 1, why doesn't it return only 0 or 1 as the index? I
> think there is something about recursion here that I'm not fully
> comprehending.
>
>
>
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>
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