[Tutor] Computing factorial...

[kinuthia muchane]

Hi,

I wanted to calculate the factorial of a given number without using
recursion. I came up with the following code, although it is not very
elegant it works. 

def factorial(*args):
     
     product = args[0]
     for item in args[1:]:
         product *= item
     return product
     
number = int(raw_input('Enter value of number to compute factorial  '))
seq = range(1,number + 1)

if number <= 0:
  print -1

else:
 print factorial(*seq)  

When I change that code a bit to (In fact, this is what I started with,
it almost drove me crazy trying to figure out what was wrong!) :

def factorial(*args):
     
     temp = args[0]
     for item in args[1:]:
         product = temp * item
     return product
     
number = int(raw_input('Enter value of number to compute factorial  '))
seq = range(1,number + 1)

if number <= 0:
  print -1

else:
 print factorial(*seq)  

... it just echoes back the number you were prompted to enter.
My confusion is, aren't the variables 'temp' and 'product' storing the
same value ie "args[0]". So why would they return different values, the
one with "temp" giving a wrong answer?

Thanks!

Kinuthia...