Book Image

Python Unlocked

By : Arun Tigeraniya
Book Image

Python Unlocked

By: Arun Tigeraniya

Overview of this book

Python is a versatile programming language that can be used for a wide range of technical tasks—computation, statistics, data analysis, game development, and more. Though Python is easy to learn, it’s range of features means there are many aspects of it that even experienced Python developers don’t know about. Even if you’re confident with the basics, its logic and syntax, by digging deeper you can work much more effectively with Python – and get more from the language. Python Unlocked walks you through the most effective techniques and best practices for high performance Python programming - showing you how to make the most of the Python language. You’ll get to know objects and functions inside and out, and will learn how to use them to your advantage in your programming projects. You will also find out how to work with a range of design patterns including abstract factory, singleton, strategy pattern, all of which will help make programming with Python much more efficient. Finally, as the process of writing a program is never complete without testing it, you will learn to test threaded applications and run parallel tests. If you want the edge when it comes to Python, use this book to unlock the secrets of smarter Python programming.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Python Unlocked
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Defining functions


Key 1: How to define functions.

Functions are used to group a set of instructions and logic that performs a specific task. So, we should make functions perform one specific task and choose a name that gives us a hint about that. If a function is important and performs complex stuff, we should always add docstrings to this function so that it is easy for us to later visit and modify this function.

While defining a function, we can define the following:

  1. Positional arguments (simply pass the object according to position), which are as follows:

    >>> def foo(a,b):
    ...   print(a,b)
    ... 
    >>> foo(1,2)
    1 2
  2. Default arguments (if value is not passed, the default is used), which are as follows:

    >>> def foo(a,b=3):
    ...    print(a,b)
    ... 
    >>> foo(3)  
    3 3
    >>> foo(3,4)
    3 4
  3. Keyword only arguments (must be passed as a positional or as a keyword argument), which are as follows:

    >>> def  foo(a,*,b):
    ...   print(a,b)
    ... 
    >>> foo(2,3...