On Jul 3, 7:58 pm, Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I am trying to improve my Python skills through some exercises. > Currently I am working on Larry's "15 exercises to know a programming > language " (http://www.knowing.net/ > PermaLink,guid,f3b9ba36-848e-43f8-9caa-232ec216192d.aspx). The first > exercise is this: > > "Write a program that takes as its first argument one of the words > 'sum,' 'product,' 'mean,' or 'sqrt' and for further arguments a > series of numbers. The program applies the appropriate function to > the series." > > My solution so far is this: > > http://dpaste.com/13469/ > > I would really like some feedback. Is this a good solution? is it > efficient? robust? what could be improved? any not looking for a > revised solution, hints on what to improve are also very welcome. > > Martin
sum is a builtin function in Python 2.3 and later. You could do something like this: try: sum except NameError: def sum(args): return reduce(operator.add, args) Tested with 2.5 back to 2.1, and 1.5.2 :-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list