How to "generalize" a function?

[jfj]

Thomas Köllmann wrote:

> Hi, everybody!
> 
> I'm teaching myself Python, and I have no experience in programming
> apart from some years of shell scripting. So, please bear with me.
> 
> These two funktions are part of an administrative script I've set
> myself as a first lesson, and, as you will see, they're practically the same,
> except for one variable. So I'd like to weld them together -- but I
> can't find out how to.

Pass the variable as an argument probably.
But because generally you wouldn't want to recompile the regexp (this 
should be done once), you could say:

# untested
def makewriter (regexp_string):
   def writeFunc(ip, regex=re.compile(regexp_string)):
      confFile = open(networkConf, 'r')
      conf = confFile.readlines()
      confFile.close
      for line in conf:
  	if regex.search(line):
  	    addressLine = line
      addressLineNum = conf.index(addressLine)
      address = string.split(addressLine, ' ')
      address[1] = ip + "\n"
      conf[addressLineNum] = string.join(address)
      confFile = open(networkConf, 'w')
      confFile.writelines(conf)
      confFile.close
   return writeFunc

writeIP=makewriter('(.*)address(.*)')
writeMask=makewriter('(.*)netmask(.*)')

This is rather advanced python programming though, but it shows
cool dynamic function creation features and it's never early to
get into it;)

jfj