Book Image

The Python Apprentice

By : Robert Smallshire, Austin Bingham
Book Image

The Python Apprentice

By: Robert Smallshire, Austin Bingham

Overview of this book

Experienced programmers want to know how to enhance their craft and we want to help them start as apprentices with Python. We know that before mastering Python you need to learn the culture and the tools to become a productive member of any Python project. Our goal with this book is to give you a practical and thorough introduction to Python programming, providing you with the insight and technical craftsmanship you need to be a productive member of any Python project. Python is a big language, and it’s not our intention with this book to cover everything there is to know. We just want to make sure that you, as the developer, know the tools, basic idioms and of course the ins and outs of the language, the standard library and other modules to be able to jump into most projects.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
12
Afterword – Just the Beginning

Defining functions


Functions are defined using the def keyword followed by the function name, an argument list in parentheses, and a colon to start a new block. Let's quickly define a few functions at the REPL to get the idea:

>>> def square(x):
...     return x * x
...

We use the return keyword to return a value from the function.

As we've seen previously, we call functions by providing the actual arguments in parentheses after the function name:

>>> square(5)
5

Functions aren't required to explicitly return a value though — perhaps they produce side effects:

>>> def launch_missiles():
...     print("Missiles launched!")
...
>>> launch_missiles()
Missiles launched!

You can return early from a function by using the return keyword with no parameter:

>>> def even_or_odd(n):
...     if n % 2 == 0:
...         print("even")
...         return
...     print("odd")
...
>>> even_or_odd(4)
even
>>> even_or_odd(5)
odd

If you don't have an explicit...