[Tutor] Re: more problems, my final questions

[Derrick 'dman' Hudson]

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On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 10:28:03AM -0700, Jeff Shannon wrote:
| Kyle Babich wrote:
|=20
| > Anyway, I came up with a work around where I write sleeptime to a
| > temporary file and extract it later.

That is unnecessary.  I recommend reading some documents or tutorials
on structured programming.  (sorry, I don't have any URLs handy)  The
specific areas to study are how local variables are handled, and how
argument passing is done.

[...]
| > Why can't I do that?
|=20
| When you read something from a file, you get a string object.  Strings do=
n't
| allow arithmetic -- you need to convert the string into an integer first.

Actually, a string can be multiplied by an integer.  It is convenient
when you want the same string to be repeated multiple times since you
don't need to go through a loop to do it.

>>> print '-'*60
------------------------------------------------------------
>>>

Since python is strongly typed, the result of the '*' operator depends
on what type of objects you are multiplying.  When a string is
multiplied by an integer, it repeats itself.  The same thing is true
for a list or a tuple.  It is not automagically converted to an
integer, ignoring all errors, and then multiplied as an integer.
Another example of the polymorphism that strong typing provides is
list (or string or tuple) addition :
    >>> print [1] + [2]
    [1, 2]
    >>>
with lists (as with strings and tuples), the '+' operator means to
concatenate the two sequences.

HTH,
-D

--=20
=20
A perverse man stirs up dissension,
and a gossip separates close friends.
        Proverbs 16:28
=20
http://dman.ddts.net/~dman/


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