Exercise 24 More Practice

You are getting to the end of this section. You should have enough Python "under your fingers" to move onto learning about how programming really works, but you should do some more practice. This exercise is longer and all about building up stamina. The next exercise will be similar. Do them, get them exactly right, and do your checks.

print "Let's practice everything."
print 'You\'d need to know \'bout escapes with \\ that do \n newlines and \t tabs.'

poem = """
\tThe lovely world
with logic so firmly planted
cannot discern \n the needs of love
nor comprehend passion from intuition
and requires an explanation
\n\t\twhere there is none.
"""

print "--------------"
print poem
print "--------------"


five = 10 - 2 + 3 - 6
print "This should be five: %s" % five

def secret_formula(started):
    jelly_beans = started * 500
    jars = jelly_beans / 1000
    crates = jars / 100
    return jelly_beans, jars, crates


start_point = 10000
beans, jars, crates = secret_formula(start_point)

print "With a starting point of: %d" % start_point
print "We'd have %d beans, %d jars, and %d crates." % (beans, jars, crates)

start_point = start_point / 10

print "We can also do that this way:"
print "We'd have %d beans, %d jars, and %d crates." % secret_formula(start_point)

What You Should See

    $ python ex24.py
    Let's practice everything.
    You'd need to know 'bout escapes with \ that do
     newlines and   tabs.
    --------------

           The lovely world
    with logic so firmly planted
    cannot discern
     the needs of love
    nor comprehend passion from intuition
    and requires an explanation

                  where there is none.

    --------------
    This should be five: 5
    With a starting point of: 10000
    We'd have 5000000 beans, 5000 jars, and 50 crates.
    We can also do that this way:
    We'd have 500000 beans, 500 jars, and 5 crates.

Study Drills

    Make sure to do your checks: read it backwards, read it out loud, put comments above confusing parts.
    Break the file on purpose, then run it to see what kinds of errors you get. Make sure you can fix it.

Common Student Questions

How come you call the variable jelly_beans the name beans later?
    That's part of how a function works. Rememer that inside the function the variable is temporary, and when you return it then it can be assigned to a variable for later. I'm just making a new variable named beans to hold the return value.
What do you mean by reading the code backwards?
    Start at the last line. Compare your that line in your file to the same line in mine. Once it's exactly the same, move up to the next line. Do this until you get to the first line of the file.
Who wrote that poem?
    I did. Not all of my poems suck.

Copyright (C) 2010 Zed. A. Shaw

Credits