Develop Reference

How do I get around functions being called when they are used as arguments for other functions

I want to use a function as a default argument for another function that can be overridden without calling the function.
Let's use this snippet:
def split():
word = input('Whats the word?')
return [letter for letter in word]
def do_something_with_letters(letters=split())
for letter in letters:
print(letter)
If I call do_something_with_letters like this:
do_somthing_with_letters()
The program works how I would expect it to but not in the order that I expect. The end result is that split is called and user input is used to define the word which is split then passed into do_something_with_letters. Now, this is happening during the declaration of do_somthing_with_letters rather than during the function call(where split() is used as a default value).
for instance if I override the default value i.e:
do_somthing_with_letters(['a', 'b', 'c'])
The following chain of events occurs: Split Declared > do_somthing_with_letters Declared > Split Called and assigned to letters(or stored in memory) > do_somthing_with_letters called with overridden value.
The user has been needlessly prompted for input when it should have been over-written.
Again I need a function to be the default value for letters any answer should have a way of keeping that.

Now, this is happening during the declaration of
do_somthing_with_letters rather than during the function call(where
split() is used as a default value).
Because the function split() is being called when the function is declared. You can initialise letters with the function name (actually the function object) without calling it by omitting the parentheses. Then you can test if the argument can be called, e.g because it is a function, callable class etc.
def do_something_with_letters(letters=split):
if callable(letters):
letters = letters()
for letter in letters:
print(letter)
Now if you call do_something_with_letters() without arguments, letters will default to the split() function and call it to get the letters to work on. If you were to pass a string or list then it would print the elements of those objects. You could even pass in a different function to have it obtain the input.
>>> do_something_with_letters()
Whats the word?hello
h
e
l
l
o
>>> do_something_with_letters('abcd')
a
b
c
d
>>> do_something_with_letters(lambda : 'a string')
a
s
t
r
i
n
g
>>> do_something_with_letters(range(5)) # not letters at all
0
1
2
3
4

You have a counter-intuitive design, combining program steps that aren't functionally related. As a result, you're trying to warp the module design to compensate. user input and pre-processing the input are not fully linked in your program design -- so why do you insist on putting them into a module where they are linked? Decouple those steps.
Your do_something function should not have to adapt to wherever the string originates. let it simply handle its string argument.
If you somehow do have a design that requires this contortion, you have a problem: the default value must be realized at the definition of do_something.
You can leave the function itself as an argument:
def do_something(source=split):
if not isstring(source):
letters = source(argument) # You still need to supply argument
However, this is still tortuous design.
Also, I strongly recommend that you not use split as a function name, since that is already a built-in string function.

I believe this sort of problem may call for a decorator. You can define a function, such as verbose (shown below), that when used to decorate a function that returns an iterable, modifies it according to the behavior as specified in do_something_with_letters from your post.
Then by simply decorating the split function, you can achieve the desired result.
def verbose(f):
def func(s):
for ch in f(s):
print(ch)
return func
#verbose
def split(s):
return (ch for ch in s)
if __name__ == '__main__':
s = input("Enter word: ")
split(s)
Now any other function may be modified in a similar way. For example, the upper_and_split function will print all characters in s in uppercase.
#verbose
def upper_and_split(s):
return (ch for ch in s.upper())

How to change a string in a function when calling a function?

I'm not sure if this is possible but is there a way to change a string that a function prints while calling it from another function? I want to do something like this:
def string():
print ("This cat was scared.")
def main():
for words in string():
str.replace("cat", "dog")
# Print "The do was scared."
main()

By popular demand (well, one person's curiosity…), here's how you actually could change the string in a function before calling that function.
You should never do this in practice. There are some use cases for playing around with code objects, but this really isn't one of them. Plus, if you do anything less trivial, you should use a library like bytecode or byteplay instead of doing it manually. Also, it goes without saying that not all Python implementations use CPython-style code objects. But anyway, here goes:
import types
def string():
print ("This cat was scared.")
def main():
# A function object is a wrapper around a code object, with
# a bit of extra stuff like default values and closure cells.
# See inspect module docs for more details.
co = string.__code__
# A code object is a wrapper around a string of bytecode, with a
# whole bunch of extra stuff, including a list of constants used
# by that bytecode. Again see inspect module docs. Anyway, inside
# the bytecode for string (which you can read by typing
# dis.dis(string) in your REPL), there's going to be an
# instruction like LOAD_CONST 1 to load the string literal onto
# the stack to pass to the print function, and that works by just
# reading co.co_consts[1]. So, that's what we want to change.
consts = tuple(c.replace("cat", "dog") if isinstance(c, str) else c
for c in co.co_consts)
# Unfortunately, code objects are immutable, so we have to create
# a new one, copying over everything except for co_consts, which
# we'll replace. And the initializer has a zillion parameters.
# Try help(types.CodeType) at the REPL to see the whole list.
co = types.CodeType(
co.co_argcount, co.co_kwonlyargcount, co.co_nlocals,
co.co_stacksize, co.co_flags, co.co_code,
consts, co.co_names, co.co_varnames, co.co_filename,
co.co_name, co.co_firstlineno, co.co_lnotab,
co.co_freevars, co.co_cellvars)
string.__code__ = co
string()
main()
If that's not hacky enough for you: I mentioned that code objects are immutable. And of course so are strings. But deep enough under the covers, they're just pointer to some C data, right? Again, only if we're using CPython, but if we are…
First, grab my superhackyinternals project off GitHub. (It's intentionally not pip-installable because you really shouldn't be using this except to experiment with your local build of the interpreter and the like.) Then:
import ctypes
import internals
def string():
print ("This cat was scared.")
def main():
for c in string.__code__.co_consts:
if isinstance(c, str):
idx = c.find('cat')
if idx != -1:
# Too much to explain here; see superhackyinternals
# and of course the C API docs and C source.
p = internals.PyUnicodeObject.from_address(id(c))
assert p.compact and p.ascii
length = p.length
addr = id(c) + internals.PyUnicodeObject.utf8_length.offset
buf = (ctypes.c_int8 * 3).from_address(addr + idx)
buf[:3] = b'dog'
string()
main()

As a guess:
You wanted string() to return a value the caller can use, instead of just printing something to the screen. So you need a return statement instead of a print call.
You want to loop over all of the words in that returned string, not all the characters, so you need to call split() on the string.
You want to replace stuff in each word, not in the literal "cat". So, you need to call replace on word, not on the str class. Also, replace doesn't actually change the word, it returns a new one, which you have to remember.
You want to print out each of those words.
If so:
def string():
return "This cat was scared."
def main():
for word in string().split():
word = word.replace("cat", "dog")
print(word, end=' ')
print()
main()
That fixes all of your problems. However, it can be simplified, because you don't really need word.replace here. You're swapping out the entire word, so you can just do this:
def main():
for word in string().split():
if word == "cat": word = "dog"
print(word, end=' ')
print()
But, even more simply, you can just call replace on the entire string, and you don't need a loop at all:
def main():
print(string().replace("cat", "dog"))

What I think you may actually be looking for, is the ability to call your function with a default argument:
def string(animal='cat'):
print("This {} was scared.".format(animal))
>>> string()
This cat was scared.
>>> string('dog')
This dog was scared.
If you pass nothing to string, the default value is assumed. Otherwise, the string prints with the substring you explicitly passed.

Looping through list of functions in a function in Python dynamically

I'd like to see if it's possible to run through a list of functions in a function. The closest thing I could find is looping through an entire module. I only want to use a pre-selected list of functions.
Here's my original problem:
Given a string, check each letter to see if any of the 5 tests fulfill.
If a minimum of 1 letter passes a check, return True.
If all letters in the string fails the check, return False.
For each letter in the string, we will check these functions: isalnum(), isalpha(), isdigit(), islower(), isupper()
The result of each test should print to different lines.
Sample Input
qA2
Sample Output (must print to separate lines, True if at least one letter passes, or false is all letters fail each test):
True
True
True
True
True
I wrote this for one test. Of course I could just write 5 different sets of code but that seems ugly. Then I started wondering if I could just loop through all the tests they're asking for.
Code for just one test:
raw = 'asdfaa3fa'
counter = 0
for i in xrange(len(raw)):
if raw[i].isdigit() == True: ## This line is where I'd loop in diff func's
counter = 1
print True
break
if counter == 0:
print False
My fail attempt to run a loop with all the tests:
raw = 'asdfaa3fa'
lst = [raw[i].isalnum(),raw[i].isalpha(),raw[i].isdigit(),raw[i].islower(),raw[i].isupper()]
counter = 0
for f in range(0,5):
for i in xrange(len(raw)):
if lst[f] == True: ## loop through f, which then loops through i
print lst[f]
counter = 1
print True
break
if counter == 0:
print False
So how do I fix this code to fulfill all the rules up there?
Using info from all the comments - this code fulfills the rules stated above, looping through each method dynamically as well.
raw = 'ABC'
functions = [str.isalnum, str.isalpha, str.isdigit, str.islower, str.isupper]
for func in functions:
print any(func(letter) for letter in raw)
getattr approach (I think this is called introspection method?)
raw = 'ABC'
meths = ['isalnum', 'isalpha', 'isdigit', 'islower', 'isupper']
for m in meths:
print any(getattr(c,m)() for c in raw)
List comprehension approach:
from __future__ import print_function ## Changing to Python 3 to use print in list comp
raw = 'ABC'
functions = [str.isalnum, str.isalpha, str.isdigit, str.islower, str.isupper]
solution = [print(func(raw)) for func in functions]

The way you are looping through a list of functions is slightly off. This would be a valid way to do it. The functions you need to store in the list are the generic string functions given by str.funcname. Once you have those list of functions, you can loop through them using a for loop, and just treat it like a normal function!
raw = 'asdfaa3fa'
functions = [str.isalnum, str.isalpha, str.isdigit, str.islower, str.isupper] # list of functions
for fn in functions: # iterate over list of functions, where the current function in the list is referred to as fn
for ch in raw: # for each character in the string raw
if fn(ch):
print(True)
break
Sample outputs:
Input Output
===================================
"qA2" -----> True True True True True
"asdfaa3fa" -----> True True True True
Also I notice you seem to use indexing for iteration which makes me feel like you might be coming from a language like C/C++. The for in loop construct is really powerful in python so I would read up on it (y).
Above is a more pythonic way to do this but just as a learning tool, I wrote a working version that matches how you tried to do it as much as possible to show you where you went wrong specifically. Here it is with comments:
raw = 'asdfaa3fa'
lst = [str.isalnum, str.isalpha, str.isdigit, str.islower, str.isupper] # notice youre treating the functions just like variables and aren't actually calling them. That is, you're writing str.isalpha instead of str.isalpha()
for f in range(0,5):
counter = 0
for i in xrange(len(raw)):
if lst[f](raw[i]) == True: # In your attempt, you were checking if lst[f]==True; lst[f] is a function so you are checking if a function == True. Instead, you need to pass an argument to lst[f](), in this case the ith character of raw, and check whether what that function evaluates to is true
print lst[f]
counter = 1
print True
break
if counter == 0:
print False

Okay, so the first question is easy enough. The simple way to do it is just do
def foo(raw):
for c in raw:
if c.isalpha(): return True
if c.isdigit(): return True
# the other cases
return False
Never neglect the simplest thing that could work.
Now, if you want to do it dynamically -- which is the magic keyword you probably needed, you want to apply something like this (cribbed from another question):
meths = [isalnum, isalpha, isdigit, islower, isupper]
for c in raw:
for m in meths:
getattr(c, m)()
Warning, this is untested code meant to give you the idea. The key notion here is that the methods of an object are attributes just like anything else, so, for example getattr("a", "isalpha")() does the following:
Uses getattr to search the attributes dictionary of "a" for a method named isalpha
Returns that method itself -- <function isalpha>
then invokes that method using the () which is the function application operator in Python.
See this example:
In [11]: getattr('a', 'isalpha')()
Out[11]: True

All the other answers are correct, but since you're a beginner, I want to point out the problem in your code:
lst = [raw[i].isalnum(),raw[i].isalpha(),raw[i].isdigit(),raw[i].islower(),raw[i].isupper()]
First: Not sure which value i currently has in your code snipped, but it seems to point somewhere in the string - which results in single characters being evaluated, not the whole string raw.
Second: When you build your list, you are already calling the methods you want to insert, which has the effect that not the functions themself get inserted, but their return values (that's why you're seeing all those True values in your print statement).
Try changing your code as follows:
lst = [raw.isalnum, raw.isalpha, raw.isdigit, raw.islower, raw.isupper]

I'm going to guess that you're validating password complexity, and I'm also going to say that software which takes an input and says "False" and there's no indication why is user-hostile, so the most important thing is not "how to loop over nested char function code wizardry (*)" but "give good feedback", and suggest something more like:
raw = 'asdfaa3fa'
import re
def validate_password(password):
""" This function takes a password string, and validates it
against the complexity requirements from {wherever}
and returns True if it's complex enough, otherwise False """
if not re.search('\d', password):
print("Error: password needs to include at least one number")
return False
elif not re.search('[a-z]', password):
print("Error: password must include at least one lowercase letter")
return False
elif not re.search('[A-Z]', password):
print("Error: password must include at least one uppercase letter")
return False
print("Password is OK")
return True
validate_password(raw)
Try online at repl.it
And the regex searching checks ranges of characters and digits in one call, which is neater than a loop over characters.
(PS. your functions overlap; a string which has characters matching 'isupper', 'islower' and 'isnumeric' already has 'isadigit' and 'isalnum' covered. More interesting would be to handle characters like ! which are not upper, lower, digits or alnum).
(*) function wizardry like the other answers is normally exactly what I would answer, but there's so much of that already answered that I may as well answer the other way instead :P

To answer the original question:
raw = 'asdfa3fa'
functions = [str.isalnum, str.isalpha, str.isdigit, str.islower, str.isupper]
isanything = [func(raw) for func in functions]
print repr(isanything)

Since you are looping through a list of simple items and trying to find if all of the functions has any valid results, you can simply define the list of functions you want to call on the input and return that. Here is a rather pythonic example of what you are trying to achieve:
def checker(checks, value):
return all(any(check(r) for r in value) for check in checks)
Test it out:
>>> def checker(checks, value):
... return all(any(check(r) for r in value) for check in checks)
...
>>> checks = [str.isalnum, str.isalpha, str.isdigit, str.islower, str.isupper]
>>> checker(checks, 'abcdef123ABC')
True
>>> checker(checks, 'abcdef123')
False
>>>

You can use introspection to loop through all of an object's attributes, whether they be functions or some other type.
However you probably don't want to do that here, because str has lots of function attributes, and you're only interested in five of them. It's probably better to do as you did and just make a list of the five you want.
Also, you don't need to loop over each character of the string if you don't want to; those functions already look at the whole string.

Check out this one-line solution for your problem. That problem is from HackerRank. I loop through a list of functions using the built-in getattr function.
s='qA2'
[print(bool(list(filter(lambda x : getattr(x, func)(),s)))) for func in ['isalnum','isalpha','isdigit','islower','isupper']]

google python exercises

I'm watching the instructional videos on you youtube and started doing some of the exercises at http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class but I'm puzzled by the below problem in the string1.py file.
What I can't seem to understand is, what is the "s" in both_ends(s): doing?
# B. both_ends
# Given a string s, return a string made of the first 2
# and the last 2 chars of the original string,
# so 'spring' yields 'spng'. However, if the string length
# is less than 2, return instead the empty string.
def both_ends(s):
# +++your code here+++
# LAB(begin solution)
if len(s) < 2:
return ''
first2 = s[0:2]
last2 = s[-2:]
return first2 + last2
At the bottom of strings1.py there are some functions:
def main()
print 'both_ends'
test(both_ends('spring'), 'spng')
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
So how does the program know to substitute "spring" for (s) or is that not what it's doing? I can post the entire file if need be. It's only 140 lines.

'spring' is the literal string passed as a parameter into function both_ends(), and 's' is the formal parameter to the function. Replacing a formal parameter with an actual parameter is performed when the function is called.
The 'test()' function is just there to confirm that the function behaves as expected.

When you call a function, the values you give the function are assigned to the corresponding arguments in the function header. In code:
def my_func(a): #function header; first argument is called a.
#a is not a string, but a variable.
print a #do something with the argument
my_func(20) #calling my_func with a value of 20. 20 is assigned to a in the
#body of the function.

s is a variable that we presume to hold a string. We pass 'spring' in through as a parameter.

s in def both_ends(s) is the parameter for the input string. The length of this string is checked with the call to len(s) < 2, and various characters in the string are accessed by position with s[0:2] and s[-2:]

See http://docs.python.org/tutorial/controlflow.html#defining-functions for specifics. Also the tutorial at http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html is pretty good - I mostly learnt from it.

s is the parameter to the function, but you plug in real strings like hello or world into the function instead of just the letter s. Think of it like a math function: you have f(x) = x + 5. When you plug in a number, say 2, you get f(2) = 2 + 5. That's exactly what happens with the both_ends function. To make it simpler, here's some code:
def f(x):
return x + 5
f(2)
The way you plug into the function in the code here is the same way you plug a string into your original function.

Python Newbie: Returning Multiple Int/String Results in Python

I have a function that has several outputs, all of which "native", i.e. integers and strings. For example, let's say I have a function that analyzes a string, and finds both the number of words and the average length of a word.
In C/C++ I would use # to pass 2 parameters to the function. In Python I'm not sure what's the right solution, because integers and strings are not passed by reference but by value (at least this is what I understand from trial-and-error), so the following code won't work:
def analyze(string, number_of_words, average_length):
... do some analysis ...
number_of_words = ...
average_length = ...
If i do the above, the values outside the scope of the function don't change. What I currently do is use a dictionary like so:
def analyze(string, result):
... do some analysis ...
result['number_of_words'] = ...
result['average_length'] = ...
And I use the function like this:
s = "hello goodbye"
result = {}
analyze(s, result)
However, that does not feel right. What's the correct Pythonian way to achieve this? Please note I'm referring only to cases where the function returns 2-3 results, not tens of results. Also, I'm a complete newbie to Python, so I know I may be missing something trivial here...
Thanks

python has a return statement, which allows you to do the follwing:
def func(input):
# do calculation on input
return result
s = "hello goodbye"
res = func(s) # res now a result dictionary
but you don't need to have result at all, you can return a few values like so:
def func(input):
# do work
return length, something_else # one might be an integer another string, etc.
s = "hello goodbye"
length, something = func(s)

If you return the variables in your function like this:
def analyze(s, num_words, avg_length):
# do something
return s, num_words, avg_length
Then you can call it like this to update the parameters that were passed:
s, num_words, avg_length = analyze(s, num_words, avg_length)
But, for your example function, this would be better:
def analyze(s):
# do something
return num_words, avg_length

In python you don't modify parameters in the C/C++ way (passing them by reference or through a pointer and doing modifications in situ).There are some reasons such as that the string objects are inmutable in python. The right thing to do is to return the modified parameters in a tuple (as SilentGhost suggested) and rebind the variables to the new values.

If you need to use method arguments in both directions, you can encapsulate the arguments to the class and pass object to the method and let the method use its properties.