Download Functions Revisited

COSC 1306—COMPUTER
SCIENCE AND PROGRAMMING
PYTHON FUNCTIONS REVISITED
Jehan-François Pâris
jfparis@uh.edu
Overview
• We will discuss scope issues
Refresher
• Very easy
REQUIRED!
• Write
– def function_name(parameters) :
statements
return result
• Observe the column and the indentation
What it does
Parameters
Function
Result
Example (I)
• Function titlecase:
– Converts a string to “Title Case” format
• Same as MS Word
– Words in the string will
• Start with an upper case letter
• All other letters will be lower case
– No special handling of articles and short
prepositions
Example (II)
• def titlecase (instring) :
# converts instring into Title Case
stringlist = instring.split(" ")
outstring = "" # empty string
for item in stringlist :
newitem = item[1].upper() +
item[1:].lower()
outstring+= newitem + " "
# still need to do some cleanup
Example (III)
•
# continuation of previous slide
if outstring[-1] == " " :
outstring = outstring[0:-1]
return outstring
A problem
• What if the variable names
– stringlist
– outstring
– item
– newitem
were used elsewhere in the program?
• What would happen?
The answer
• Nothing
What happens in Las Vegas,
stays in Las Vegas
What happens inside a function
stays inside the function
How?
• Python creates new instances of
– stringlist
– outstring
– item
– newitem
that only exist inside the function
Example
• def donothing() :
k=5
k=0
donothing()
print(“k = “ + str(k))
• Program will print k = 0
The exception
What happens in Las Vegas,
stays in Las Vegas UNLESS
you post in on Facebook or Youtube
What happens inside a function
stays inside the function UNLESS
you specify the variable is global
Example
• def dosomething() :
global k
k=5
k=0
dosomething()
print(“k = “ + str(k))
• Program will print k = 5
Advantages
• Some variables are inherently global
– Useful in simulations of complex systems
• You can pass “invisible parameters” to a function
– Some people will think you are too lazy to
pass them as parameters
Disadvantages
• Updating variables “on the sly” is very dangerous
– Can—and often will—confuse the reader
– Will cause hard to find errors
The verdict
• Do not use global variables in your functions
unless you have a good reason to do so
• Python default option is the right one
What happens inside a function
should stay inside the function
Exercise
• Write a function that return the harmonic
mean h of two numbers (a and b)
– 1/h(a, b) = 2(1/a + 1/b)
Solution
• def h(a, b) :
return 2*a*b/(a +b)