trouble understanding None

[Peter Otten]

Jakle wrote:

> I'm trying to write a program (with my very limited knowledge of python)
> that will convert text I type into those letters drawn with ascii symbols.
> I did 2 letters then went to test it. Here's the code I have so far:
> 
[...]

> WOW, that came out weird, but if you copy/paste it into idle it looks
> fine. That an "S" and a "T". Anyways, The idea is to have a function for
> each letter, then use a for loop and a ton of if statements to traverse
> and print the letters/functions. I understand that I might be doing too
> much work to do this, but I'm trying to practice what I am learning. OK,
> the test prints the letters, but also prints "None" at the end of each
> function. I don't understand it. I'm reading "How To Think Like A Computer
> Scientist: Learning With Python", and it only has one little paragraph
> about the "None" return value, and that's only regarding conditional
> statements. If someone could throw some wisdom my way I'm be very
> greatful. Thanks ahead of time.

Never put print statements into functions that shall themselves produce a
printable result

Be aware that in order to get a single printable backslash, you have to put
it twice into a string constant:

>>> print "\\"
\

For a learning experience it would probably be best to stick with your
approach and just write

S(); T(); S() 

instead of

print S(), T(), S()

The next step would then be to put the functions into a dictionary and look
them up:

d = {"S": S, "T": T}
for c in "some string":
    d[c]()

However, you did appeal to the "child in the man", so I put together some
code that does what you want but didn't dare ask :-)
I won't go into the details, but the concept is to store an entire line of
text and translate it into the twelve partial lines of your ascii art
charset. With 

print >> obj, "some string" 

you can redirect the output to any obj that provides a write(s) method.

Peter


import sys
charset = { "S":
    [
        "  ________  ",
        " /--------\ ",
        "//        \\\\",
        "||        ^^",
        "||          ",
        r"\\________  ",
        r" \--------\ ",
        "          \\\\",
        "          ||",
        "_         ||",
        r"\\________//",
        r" \--------/ ",
    ],
    "T":
    [
        "______________",
        "------  ------",
        "      ||      ",
        "      ||      ",
        "      ||      ",
        "      ||      ",
        "      ||      ",
        "      ||      ",
        "      ||      ",
        "      ||      ",
        "      ||      ",
        "      ||      ",
    ],
    " ":
    ["     "] * 12
}

class Big:
    def __init__(self, charset=charset, height=None, write=None,
defaultchar=" "):
        self.charset = charset
        if height is None:
            height = len(charset.itervalues().next())
        self.height = height
        self.cache = []
        self.defaultchar = charset[defaultchar]
        if write is None:
            write = sys.stdout.write
        self.rawWrite = write

    def _writeLine(self):
        line = [self.charset.get(c, self.defaultchar) for c in
"".join(self.cache)]
        self.cache = []
        for row in range(self.height):
            self.rawWrite("".join([c[row] for c in line]))
            self.rawWrite("\n")

    def write(self, s):
        while True:
            pos = s.find("\n")
            if pos == -1:
                break
            self.cache.append(s[:pos])
            self._writeLine()
            s = s[pos+1:]
        self.cache.append(s)
    def close(self):
        self.write("\n")

big = Big()

print >> big, "ST", "TS"
print >> big, "STS"
print >> big, "S\nT\nS"
print >> big, "TS",
big.close()