On Jul 3, 1:47 pm, John Machin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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 :-)
Thanks John and Daniel. My revised version now uses sum(). I have started to implement some basic error checking and validation. Martin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
