Doctest failing

Tigerstyle laddosingh at gmail.com
Sun Sep 11 12:42:28 EDT 2011


On 11 Sep, 04:12, t... at thsu.org wrote:
> On Sep 10, 7:47 am, Peter Otten <__pete... at web.de> wrote:
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> > Tigerstyle wrote:
> > > I'm strugglin with some homework stuff and am hoping you can help me
> > > out here.
>
> > > This is the code:
>
> > > small_words = ('into', 'the', 'a', 'of', 'at', 'in', 'for', 'on')
> > >     new_title = []
> > >     title_split = title.strip().lower().split()
> > >     for word in title_split:
> > >         if title_split[0] in small_words:
> > >             new_title.append(word.title())
> > >         elif word in small_words:
> > >             new_title.append(word.lower())
> > >         else:
> > >             new_title.append(word.title())
>
> > The logic of the for-loop is flawed; the expression
>
> > title_split[0] in small_words
>
> > will always evaluate to True if the first word is a "small word", even when
> > the loop is already past the first word. You can work around that with a
> > flag along these lines
>
> > first = True
> > for word in title_split:
> >     if first:
> >         # special treatment for the first word
> >         first = False
> >     else:
> >         # put checks for all words but the first here
> >     new_title.append(fixed_word) # assuming you have stored the titlecased
> >                                  # or lowercased word in the fixed_word
> >                                  # variable
>
> Another way to tackle this is to just capitalize the entire sentence
> before returning it.
>
> new_title = []
> title_split = title.strip().lower().split()
> for word in title_split:
>   if word in small_words:
>     new_title.append(word.lower())
>   else:
>     new_title.append(word.title())
> return(''.join(new_title).capitalize())
>
> However, I'm only helping with your homework, because I want to point
> out that doctest comments should be *readable*. Don't just throw them
> in, take the extra 10-15 seconds to make them easier on the eyes. In
> the workplace, months will pass before you review this code again, so
> you want to make it easier for an older version of yourself to
> remember it.
>
> And it takes very little effort to make it readable. Here's your
> doctest string, reformatted with just a tiny bit more whitespace. I
> even cut out a sentence.
>
> def book_title(title):
>   """
>   All words EXCEPT for small words are made title case
>   unless the string starts with a preposition, in which
>   case the word is correctly capitalized.
>
>   >>> book_title('DIVE Into python')
>   'Dive into Python'
>   >>> book_title('the great gatsby')
>   'The Great Gatsby'
>   >>> book_title('the WORKS OF AleXANDer dumas')
>   'The Works of Alexander Dumas'
>   """
> --
> // T.Hsu

It capitalises the phrase, but still the rest of the phrase is in
lower case.



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