Pete Froslie wrote:
so, I've been playing with the functions a bit-- took a little time to get
the hang of them after I started that other mess. Initially, I've done the
opposite suggested here by creating functions without the input values. I do
see the where it will pay off in re-usability that route.. Alan, I'll read
your tutorial on modules and functions.
Things that are arising for me now:
(1)the use of global variables- seems it would be easier to communicate
between functions with 'I/O' values if I understood where the best location
for declaration is..
You don't seem to understand functions. Part of the point is to *avoid*
global variables. If everything a function uses is passed in as
arguments, and if everything it produces is returned as return value(s),
it's much easier to see its effect. And to make sure it doesn't have bugs.
(2)not sure why this function doesn't work:
word_count = 0 #set up variable to increment through text
def increment(x):
return x+1
increment(word_count)
This function doesn't have any effect on global variables. It returns a
value that's one more than its argument. Period. If you wanted to
increment word_count using that function, you'd do something like:
word_count = increment(word_count)
(3) related to strings: Trying a function that will strip unwanted words off
of the url before I bounce it off the website. For instance, I don't need to
search for a, was, is... This is working, but with strange results-- often
it will find an 'a' in the middle of a word and replace it with text and
such.
using rstrip, but with varying results:
#this is the url as a string
http://words.bighugelabs.com/api/2/e413f24701aa30b7d441ca43a64317be/A/
thesaurus = string.rstrip(url(),"/A/") + '/' # stripping the end off and
re-adding the '/'
The url function btw:
def url():
fin = open("journey_test.txt", "r")
response = re.split(r"[/|/,\n, , ,:\"\"\.?,)(\-\<>\[\]'\r']",
fin.read())
thesaurus = API_URL + response[word_number] + '/' #API_URL is
established at the start of the code
return thesaurus
Pete F
I have no clue what this url() function is trying to do. Nor how you
expect to use it. Are you planning to open this file for each word
contained in it?
DaveA
_______________________________________________
Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
