[Tutor] UselessPython 2.0

[Dick Moores]

Sean Steeg wrote at 11:22 4/7/2005:
>So we're requesting that anyone with
>one-offs, snippets, mini-apps, full-fledged apps and the like make a
>submission to the new and improved UselessPython.  The code doesn't
>have to be pretty, but it does have to work.

I'm a newbie, but would this qualify as a contribution to UselessPython 2.0?

====================================
#isPalindrome.py

# revision of http://www.uselesspython.com/glpalindrome.py to handle 
palindromes
#   such as "Radar" and "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!"

# http://www.palindromelist.com/ has many palindromes

# string.ascii_lowercase is 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'


import string

def isPalindrome(w):
     return w == '' or (w[0]==w[-1]) and isPalindrome(w[1:-1]) # recursive

def makeStringAllLowercaseAlpha(s):
     """
     Take any string, convert all uppercase alphabetic characters to 
lower case,
     then strip all non-alphabetic characters
     """
     s1 = string.lower(userstring)
     s2 = ""
     for index in range(len(s1)):
         if s1[index] in string.ascii_lowercase:
             s2 += s1[index]
     return s2

userstring = raw_input('Enter a word or sentence to test: ')
userstringRevised = makeStringAllLowercaseAlpha(userstring)

if isPalindrome(userstringRevised):
     print userstring, "is a palindrome."
else:
     print userstring, "is not a palindrome."
====================================

Dick Moores
rdm at rcblue.com