tutorialv3

Alan Gauld

12 April 2010
 tutorialv3

Table of Contents
Learning to program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Learning to program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
What do I need to be a programmer? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
What is programming? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Learning to Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Simple sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
More Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Looping the loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
A Little Bit of Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Conditionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Functions and Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
File Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Text Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Regular Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Event Driven Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Introduction to GUI Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Recursion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Introduction to Functional Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
A Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Python in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Apr 12, 2010

Learning to program 12/04/2010

Contents
Learning to Program
Introduction
by Alan Gauld

Concepts
Introduction - What, Why, Who etc.
What do I need?
Some Background
What is
'Programming'? The reason I created this tutorial originally is that two friends wanted to learn
how to program and asked for my help. I was amazed to discover that while there
Getting Started
were many programming web sites and tutorials on the web there was virtually
nothing that taught programming to complete beginners. So I wrote one. That
situation has changed and there are now many sites for beginners and I provide
The Basics links to some of them at the bottom of this page. However my approach is still
unique and as such may appeal to some learners more than the other sites, so here
Simple Sequences it stays.

The Raw Materials The idea of learning to program is still, I believe, a good one for most computer
users, even if they do not ever write any significant programs themselves.
More Sequences Understanding how programmers think can help make applications more logical
and user friendly. Also many applications allow customisation by writing little
Loops programs known as macros. And of course there is the web with the opportunity
to publish your own web site and sooner or later you will want to add some
Add a little style dynamic features to your web pages, and that means programming. Finally the
Internet and the Web encourage a general interest in computers and that interest
Talking to the user naturally leads to a desire to "take control", which means learning to program!

Branching Why me? Well I am a professional programmer who came to programming from
an electronic engineering background. I have used (and continue to use) several
Modules &
computer languages and don't have any personal interest in promoting any
Functions
particular tool or language.
Handling Files
What will I cover
Handling Text
As much as I can. I will cover the basic theory of computer programming - what
Error Handling it is, some of its history and the basic techniques needed to solve problems. I will
not be teaching esoteric techniques or the details of any particular programming
language, in fact I'll be using several different languages, since I believe its
important to realize that different languages do different things well. That said,
Advanced Topics the majority of the course will be in the language called Python.

What's in a name? Who should read it?

Regular Put another way: what do I expect the reader to know already?
Expressions
I expect the reader of this tutorial to be an experienced user of a computer
Object Oriented system, probably running Windows, MacOS or Linux although others should be
Programming able to cope too. I also expect them to understand some very basic mathematical
concepts such as how to calculate areas of simple shapes, geometric coordinates,

D:\DOC\HomePage\l2p\index.htm Page 1
Learning to program 12/04/2010

Event Driven sets, and basic algebra. These are all important in todays programming
Programming environments, and many programming concepts are based on these ideas.
However the depth of knowledge needed is very low and if you do find the math
GUI Programming getting too hard, you can usually just skip over a few paragraphs, try the code as
it is and hopefully the penny will drop even if the math still confuses you.
Recursion
- or doing it to One thing you should know is how to run commands from your operating
yourself system's command prompt. In Windows this is variously known as a DOS box,
the MS DOS Window or MS-DOS Prompt, or occasionally, nowadays, the CMD
Functional Box. Basically it's a black window with a white text prompt that usually says
Programming C:\WINDOWS> and you can start it by going to the Start->Run dialog and
typing CMD into the entry box and hitting OK. If you use Linux then you should
A Case Study
know all about terminal windows and on MacOS you can run the
Terminal program under Mac OS X (which is found in the
Applications->Utilities folder). There are lots of powerful shortcuts that
can save you typing time if you care to read the help files for your Operating
Applications
System prompt. I won't cover those here. One tutorial for Windows users can be
Python in Practice found here. And a basic Unix shell primer can be found here.

Working with I will not be covering issues like how to create or copy text files, how to install
Databases software, or the organization of files on a computer storage system. Frankly if
you need to know those things you probably are not at the stage of being ready to
Using the Operating program, regardless of your desire to do so. Find a tutorial for your computer
System first, then when you're confident with the above concepts revisit this site.
Remember that Windows and MacOS both have comprehensive help systems
Inter-process built in. Linux has a huge amount of tutorial material on the web, Google is your
communications friend...

Network Why Python?

programming
Python happens to be a nice language to learn. Its syntax is simple and it has
Writing web clients some very powerful features built into the language. It supports lots of
programming styles from the very simple through to state of the art Object
Writing Web Oriented and Functional techniques. It runs on lots of platforms - Unix/Linux,
Applications MS Windows, Macintosh etc. It also has a very friendly and helpful user
community. All of these are important features for a beginner's language.
Parallel processing
Python however is not just a beginner's language. As your experience grows you
can keep on using Python either as an end in itself or as a rapid prototyping
language. There are a few things that Python is not well suited to, but these are
Appendices
comparatively few and far between.
References, Books
I will also use VBScript and JavaScript as alternatives. The reason for this is to
and Projects
show that the same basic techniques apply regardless of the language details.
Once you can program in one language you can easily pick up a new one in a few
days. Why those languages? Well, for a start they have very different styles to
Download the Python so form a useful contrast, and more prosaically if we accept that most
whole thing in TGZ Web surfers who are also beginners are using PCs with Microsoft Windows
format installed, there is a programming environment built in to the operating system
called Windows Scripting Host which has support for VBScript and JScript
Or in ZIP format. (which is Microsoft's variant of JavaScript). In addition, anyone using Microsoft's
web browser can also use these languages within their browser and, in fact,

D:\DOC\HomePage\l2p\index.htm Page 2
Learning to program 12/04/2010

Or in PDF format. JavaScript should work in almost any browser on any Operating System. Initially
we'll only look at how to run VBScript and JavaScript inside a browser, but I will
Send Feedback be introducing WSH in some of the later topics as an optional extra.

Other resources
There are other Web sites trying to do this in other languages (and in the time
since I originally created this site a few other Python sites have appeared). There
are also lots of tutorials for those who already know how to program but want to
learn a new language. This section contains links to some of those that I think are
interesting!

The official Python language web site with online documentation, latest
downloads etc.
The official Perl web site - Perl is a natural competitor to Python in
capability but is, I think, harder to learn.
JavaScript. is the source for information about JavaScript.
If you don't much like my style a web site with similar aims is the How to
think like a Computer Scientist produced by Jeff Elkner who uses Python
in his high School classes. It seems a little bit less comprehensive than
mine, but maybe I'm just biased :-)
Finally, if you are an adventurous sort with a good math background you
might try the How to Design Programs web site which is also available as
a paper book. It teaches a dialect of the Lisp programming language
called Scheme. It is very effective at introducing a methodical approach to
building programs.
Since I first wrote this tutor a whole bunch of non programmer's tutorials
have appeared and they are listed on the Python web site, so you can take
your pick. Most of them focus on just getting you programming in Python
so they don't explain so much of the jargon as I do, nor do they explain
the Computer Science theory like Jeff does. You can find the page here.

Next Contents

If you have any ideas on how to improve this tutorial

please feel free to email me

D:\DOC\HomePage\l2p\index.htm Page 3
Learning to program 12/04/2010

Learning to Program
by Alan Gauld

Introduction - What, Why, Who etc.

Some Background
The reason I created this tutorial originally is that two friends wanted to learn how to program and
asked for my help. I was amazed to discover that while there were many programming web sites and
tutorials on the web there was virtually nothing that taught programming to complete beginners. So I
wrote one. That situation has changed and there are now many sites for beginners and I provide links
to some of them at the bottom of this page. However my approach is still unique and as such may
appeal to some learners more than the other sites, so here it stays.

The idea of learning to program is still, I believe, a good one for most computer users, even if they do
not ever write any significant programs themselves. Understanding how programmers think can help
make applications more logical and user friendly. Also many applications allow customisation by
writing little programs known as macros. And of course there is the web with the opportunity to
publish your own web site and sooner or later you will want to add some dynamic features to your
web pages, and that means programming. Finally the Internet and the Web encourage a general
interest in computers and that interest naturally leads to a desire to "take control", which means
learning to program!

Why me? Well I am a professional programmer who came to programming from an electronic
engineering background. I have used (and continue to use) several computer languages and don't
have any personal interest in promoting any particular tool or language.

What will I cover

As much as I can. I will cover the basic theory of computer programming - what it is, some of its
history and the basic techniques needed to solve problems. I will not be teaching esoteric techniques
or the details of any particular programming language, in fact I'll be using several different languages,
since I believe its important to realize that different languages do different things well. That said, the
majority of the course will be in the language called Python.

Who should read it?

Put another way: what do I expect the reader to know already?

I expect the reader of this tutorial to be an experienced user of a computer system, probably running
Windows, MacOS or Linux although others should be able to cope too. I also expect them to
understand some very basic mathematical concepts such as how to calculate areas of simple shapes,
geometric coordinates, sets, and basic algebra. These are all important in todays programming
environments, and many programming concepts are based on these ideas. However the depth of
knowledge needed is very low and if you do find the math getting too hard, you can usually just skip
over a few paragraphs, try the code as it is and hopefully the penny will drop even if the math still
confuses you.

D:\DOC\HomePage\l2p\tutintro.htm Page 4
Learning to program 12/04/2010

One thing you should know is how to run commands from your operating system's command prompt.
In Windows this is variously known as a DOS box, the MS DOS Window or MS-DOS Prompt, or
occasionally, nowadays, the CMD Box. Basically it's a black window with a white text prompt that
usually says C:\WINDOWS> and you can start it by going to the Start->Run dialog and typing
CMD into the entry box and hitting OK. If you use Linux then you should know all about terminal
windows and on MacOS you can run the Terminal program under Mac OS X (which is found in the
Applications->Utilities folder). There are lots of powerful shortcuts that can save you typing
time if you care to read the help files for your Operating System prompt. I won't cover those here.
One tutorial for Windows users can be found here. And a basic Unix shell primer can be found here.

I will not be covering issues like how to create or copy text files, how to install software, or the
organization of files on a computer storage system. Frankly if you need to know those things you
probably are not at the stage of being ready to program, regardless of your desire to do so. Find a
tutorial for your computer first, then when you're confident with the above concepts revisit this site.
Remember that Windows and MacOS both have comprehensive help systems built in. Linux has a
huge amount of tutorial material on the web, Google is your friend...

Why Python?
Python happens to be a nice language to learn. Its syntax is simple and it has some very powerful
features built into the language. It supports lots of programming styles from the very simple through
to state of the art Object Oriented and Functional techniques. It runs on lots of platforms -
Unix/Linux, MS Windows, Macintosh etc. It also has a very friendly and helpful user community. All
of these are important features for a beginner's language.

Python however is not just a beginner's language. As your experience grows you can keep on using
Python either as an end in itself or as a rapid prototyping language. There are a few things that Python
is not well suited to, but these are comparatively few and far between.

I will also use VBScript and JavaScript as alternatives. The reason for this is to show that the same
basic techniques apply regardless of the language details. Once you can program in one language you
can easily pick up a new one in a few days. Why those languages? Well, for a start they have very
different styles to Python so form a useful contrast, and more prosaically if we accept that most Web
surfers who are also beginners are using PCs with Microsoft Windows installed, there is a
programming environment built in to the operating system called Windows Scripting Host which has
support for VBScript and JScript (which is Microsoft's variant of JavaScript). In addition, anyone
using Microsoft's web browser can also use these languages within their browser and, in fact,
JavaScript should work in almost any browser on any Operating System. Initially we'll only look at
how to run VBScript and JavaScript inside a browser, but I will be introducing WSH in some of the
later topics as an optional extra.

Other resources
There are other Web sites trying to do this in other languages (and in the time since I originally
created this site a few other Python sites have appeared). There are also lots of tutorials for those who
already know how to program but want to learn a new language. This section contains links to some
of those that I think are interesting!

The official Python language web site with online documentation, latest downloads etc.
The official Perl web site - Perl is a natural competitor to Python in capability but is, I think,
harder to learn.
JavaScript. is the source for information about JavaScript.

D:\DOC\HomePage\l2p\tutintro.htm Page 5
Learning to program 12/04/2010

If you don't much like my style a web site with similar aims is the How to think like a
Computer Scientist produced by Jeff Elkner who uses Python in his high School classes. It
seems a little bit less comprehensive than mine, but maybe I'm just biased :-)
Finally, if you are an adventurous sort with a good math background you might try the How
to Design Programs web site which is also available as a paper book. It teaches a dialect of the
Lisp programming language called Scheme. It is very effective at introducing a methodical
approach to building programs.
Since I first wrote this tutor a whole bunch of non programmer's tutorials have appeared and
they are listed on the Python web site, so you can take your pick. Most of them focus on just
getting you programming in Python so they don't explain so much of the jargon as I do, nor do
they explain the Computer Science theory like Jeff does. You can find the page here.

Next Contents

If you have any ideas on how to improve this tutorial

please feel free to email me

D:\DOC\HomePage\l2p\tutintro.htm Page 6
What do I need to be a programmer? 12/04/2010

What do I need?
What will we cover?
The character and mindset of a programmer, the programming environments used in the tutor.

Generally
In principle you don't need anything to do this course other than an Internet enabled computer - which
I assume you have if you are reading this in the first place! The other thing that is useful is the right
mind set to program. What I mean by that is an innate curiosity about things, coupled to a logical way
of thinking. These are both essential requirements for a successful programmer.

The curiosity factor comes into play in looking for answers to problems and being willing to dig
around in sometimes obscure documents for ideas and information needed to complete a task.

The logical thinking comes into play because computers are intrinsically stupid. They can't really do
anything except add single digits together and move bytes from one place to another. Luckily for us
some talented programmers have written lots of programs to hide this basic stupidity. But of course as
a programmer you may well get into a new situation where you have to face that stupidity in its raw
state. At that point you have to think for the computer. You have to figure out exactly what needs to
be done to your data and when.

So much for the philosophy! However if you want to get the best from the tutorial you will want to
follow along, either typing in the examples by hand or cutting and pasting from the Web page into
your text editor. Then you can run the programs and see the results. To do that you will need to have
Python installed on your system (and for the VBScript/JScript examples you'll need a browser capable
of running those languages. Almost any modern browser can run JavaScript.)

Python
Python version 3 is the latest release at the time of writing. The Python download is quite big (about
13Mb for the Windows binary version) but it does include all the documentation and lots of tools,
some of which we'll look at later in the tutorial. Make sure you pick the one that matches your
system.

For Linux/Unix you can get the source and build it - see your sys admin!! It also comes pre-built (and
pre-installed) in most Linux distributions these days and packaged versions (for Red Hat, Mandrake,
Suse and Debian) can be found too. In fact you may well find that many of the system admin tools
you use on Linux are actually written in Python.

The master download site for Python is:

http://www.python.org/download

Windows and MacOS users might prefer the ActiveState version which normally comes with some
platform specific extras bundled with the core program. However at the time of writing the extras
have not been made available for Python v3 so I recommend sticking to the official web site for now.
But, by the time you read this, things might have changed, so it might be worth just checking first.

VBScript and JavaScript

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What do I need to be a programmer? 12/04/2010

As I said earlier most browsers can run JavaScript without any problems. VBScript will only work in
Microsoft's Internet Explorer. You don't need to install anything for these languages, either you have
them (on Windows boxes) or you don't (JavaScript only on Linux/MacOS). The only thing to watch
out for is that some paranoid system administrators occasionally turn off the scripting feature of the
browser for security purposes, but since so many web sites use JavaScript nowadays that's pretty
unlikely.

And that's it. Bring your brain, a sense of humor and start programming....

Points to remember
You need logical thinking and curiosity to program
Python, JavaScript and VBScript(on Windows only) are all freely available
Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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What is programming? 12/04/2010

What is Programming?
What will we cover?
An introduction to the terminology of computing plus some history and a brief look at the structure
of a computer program.

Back to Basics
Computer Programming is the art of making a computer do what you want it to do.

At the very simplest level it consists of issuing a sequence of commands to a computer to achieve an
objective. In the Microsoft world MS DOS users used to create text files with lists of commands
called batch files. These simply executed the sequence of commands as a group or batch, hence the
name. The files had an extension of .BAT and so were sometimes called BAT files. You can still
produce these in Windows environments today but in practice they are rarely seen.

AS an example, you might be producing a document (such as this tutorial) which comprises lots of
separate files. Your word processor may produce backup copies of each file as it saves a new version.
At the end of the day you may want to put the current version of the document (all the latest files)
into a 'backup' directory/folder. Finally, to tidy up, delete all the word processor's backup files ready
to start work the next day. A simple BAT file to do this would be:

COPY *.HTM BACKUP

DEL *.BAK

If the file were called SAVE.BAT then at the end of each day I could simply type SAVE at a DOS
prompt and the files would be saved and backups deleted. This is a program.

Note: Users of Linux or other operating systems have their own versions of these files often known as
shell scripts. Unix shell scripts are much more powerful than DOS BAT files, and support most of the
programming techniques that we will be discussing in this course.

Let me say that again

If you were a little daunted by that, please don't be. A computer program is simply a set of
instructions to tell a computer how to perform a particular task. It's rather like a recipe: a set of
instructions to tell a cook how to make a particular dish. It describes the ingredients (the data) and the
sequence of steps (the process) needed to convert the ingredients into a cake or whatever. Programs
are very similar in concept.

A little history
Just as you speak to a friend in a language so you 'speak' to the computer in a language. The only
language that the computer understands is called binary and there are several different dialects of it -
which is why that cool MacOS program won't run on your Windows PC and vice versa. Binary is
unfortunately very difficult for humans to read or write so we have to use an intermediate language
and get it translated into binary for us. This is rather like watching the American and Russian
presidents talking at a summit meeting - One speaks in English, then an interpreter repeats what has
been said in Russian. The other replies in Russian and the interpreter again repeats the sentence, this
time in English.

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Oddly enough the thing that translates our intermediate language into binary is also called an
interpreter. And just as you usually need a different interpreter to translate English into Russian than
you do to translate Arabic into Russian so you need a different computer interpreter to translate
Python into binary from the one that translates VBScript into binary.

The very first programmers actually had to enter the binary codes themselves, this is known as
machine code programming and is incredibly difficult. The next stage was to create a translator that
simply converted English equivalents of the binary codes into binary so that instead of having to
remember that the code 001273 05 04 meant add 5 to 4 programmers could now write ADD
5 4. This very simple improvement made life much simpler and these systems of codes were really the
first programming languages, one for each type of computer. They were known as
assembler languages and Assembler programming is still used for a few specialized programming
tasks today.

Even this was very primitive and still told the computer what to do at the hardware level - move data
from this memory location to that memory location, add this byte to that byte etc. (Binary data is
represented as a stream of binary digits or bits, and for convenience these are grouped into sets of
eight which are called bytes or occasionally octets. Bytes traditionally were used to represent the
characters of text, one byte per letter.) Programming this way was still very difficult and took a lot of
programming effort to achieve even simple tasks.

Gradually computer scientists developed higher level computer languages to make the job easier. This
was just as well because at the same time users were inventing ever more complex jobs for computers
to solve! This competition between the computer scientists and the users is still going on and new
languages keep on appearing. This makes programming interesting but also makes it important that as
a programmer you understand the concepts of programming as well as the pragmatics of doing it in
one particular language.

I'll discuss some of those common concepts next, but we will keep coming back to them as we go
through the course.

The common features of all programs

A long time ago a man called Edsger Dijkstra came up with a concept called structured programming.
This said that all programs could be structured in the following four ways:

Sequences of instructions:

Here the program flows from one step to the next in strict sequence.

Branches:

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Here the program reaches a decision point and if the result of the test is true then the program
performs the instructions in Path 1, and if false it performs the actions in Path 2. This is also
known as a conditional construct because the program flow is dependent on the result of a
test condition.

Loops:

In this construct the program steps are repeated continuously until some test condition is
reached, at which point control then flows past the loop into the next piece of program logic.

Modules:

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Here the program performs an identical sequence of actions several times. For convenience
these common actions are placed in a module, which is a kind of mini-program which can be
executed from within the main program. Other names for such a module are: sub-routine,
procedure or function.

Along with these structures programs also need a few more features to make them useful:

Data (we take a closer look at data in the Raw Materials topic.)
Operations (add, subtract, compare etc.
- we also take a look at the operations we can perform on data in the Raw Materials topic.)
Input/Output capability (e.g. to display results
- we look at how to read data in the "Talking to the User" and Handling Files topics.)

Once you understand those concepts and how a particular programming language implements them
then you can write a program in that language.

Let's clear up some terminology

We already said that programming was the art of making a computer do what you want, but what is a
program?

In fact there are two distinct concepts of a program. The first is the one perceived by the user - an
executable file that is installed and can be run repeatedly to perform a task. For example users speak
of running their "word processor program". The other concept is the program as seen by the
programmer, this is the text file of instructions to the computer, written in some programming
language, that can be translated into an executable file. So when you talk about a program always be
clear about which concept you mean.

Basically a programmer writes a program in a high level language which is interpreted into the bytes
that the computer understands. In technical speak the programmer generates source code and the
interpreter generates object code. Sometimes object code has other names like: P-Code, binary
code or machine code.

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The translator has a couple of names, one being the interpreter and the other being the compiler.
These terms actually refer to two different techniques of generating object code from source code. It
used to be the case that compilers produced object code that could be run on its own (an executable
file - another term) whereas an interpreter had to be present to run its program as it went along. The
difference between these terms is now blurring however since some compilers now require
interpreters to be present to do a final conversion and some interpreters simply compile their source
code into temporary object code and then execute it.

From our perspective it makes no real difference, we write source code and use a tool to allow the
computer to read, translate and execute it.

The structure of a program

The exact structure of a program depends on the programming language and the environment that
you run it on. However there are some general principles:

A loader - every program needs to be loaded into memory by the operating system. The loader
does this and is usually created by the interpreter for you.
Data definitions - most programs operate on data and somewhere in the source code we need
to define exactly what type of data we will be working with. Different languages do this very
differently.
Statements - these are the core of your program. The statements actually manipulate the data
we define and do the calculations, print the output etc.

Most programs follow one of two structures:

Batch programs

These are typically started from a command line (or automatically via a scheduler utility) and tend to
follow a pattern of:

That is, the program will typically start off by setting its internal state, perhaps setting totals to zero,
opening the needed files etc. Once it is ready to start work it will read data either from the user by
displaying prompts on a screen or from a data file. Most commonly a combination is used whereby the

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user provides the name of the data file and the real data is read from the file. Then the program does
the actual data processing involving math or data conversion or whatever. Finally the results are
produced, either to a screen display or, perhaps, by writing them back to a file.

All the programs we write in the early parts of this tutorial will be batch style programs.

Event driven programs

Most systems with a Graphical User Interface or GUI (eg. Microsoft Windows or MacOS) and
embedded control systems - like your Microwave, camera etc. are event driven. That is the operating
system sends events to the program and the program responds to these as they arrive. Events can
include things a user does - like clicking the mouse or pressing a key - or things that the system itself
does like updating the clock or refreshing the screen.

Event driven programs generally look like:

In this configuration the program again starts off by setting up its internal state, but then control is
handed off to the event loop - which is usually provided by the operating environment (sometimes
referred to as the runtime). The program then waits for the event loop to detect user actions which it
translates to events. These events are sent to the program to deal with one at a time. Eventually the
user will perform an action that terminates the program, at which point an Exit Event will be created
and sent to the program.

We look at event loops and event driven programming in the "Advanced Topics" section and again in
the GUI programming topic.
Points to remember

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Programs control the computer

Programming languages allow us to 'speak' to the computer at a level that is closer to how
humans think than how computers 'think'
Programs operate on data
Programs can be either Batch oriented or Event driven

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Learning to Program 12/04/2010

Welcome to the Learning to Program Website

This web site is designed to help total beginners learn to program. There are two tutorials to choose
from. "Version 2" on uses Python Version 2 as the programming language, along with VBScript and
Javascript, while "Version 3" uses Python Version 3! At the time of writing I recommend that total
beginners use Version 2 because Python Version 3 is still a little bit too immature, however that
situation is changing rapidly and if you feel adventurous by all means give V3 a go.

Version 2 Version 3

insert Stop Press Here

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Simple Sequences
What will we cover?
Single statements
The use of Python as a calculator
Using parentheses to get the correct result
Using format strings to print complex output
How to quit Python from within a program.

A simple sequence of instructions is the most basic program you can write. The simplest sequence is
one containing a single programme statement. A statement is usually entered all on one line, although
occasionally they can spill over onto two or more lines. A statement is a group of words and symbols
that is meaningful to the interpreter, it's a bit like a sentence in natural language. We will try out some
of these now. The examples will show what you should type at the '>>> ' Python prompt, along with
the result, and the following paragraph will explain what happens.

Displaying output

The first thing we need to learn is how to get Python to display some information. Without that we
would not know what the computer had done and it would all be pretty pointless!

>>> print('Hello there!')

Hello there!

Note: The first thing to notice is that you don't need to type the space between the >>> and the 'print'
- Python puts that there for you. The part in bold is what you need to type, the second line is the
output printed by the interpreter.

Secondly Python cares about details like whether or not you use upper or lower case. If you typed
Print instead of print you would get an error because Python considers the two words to be
different. (JavaScript is also fussy about case whereas VBScript is much more forgiving, but it's best
to just get used to being very careful about case when programming.)

The print() function is the way to get Python to display its results to you. In this case it is printing
the sequence of characters H,e,l,l,o, ,t,h,e,r,e,!. Such a sequence of characters is known in
programming circles as a string of characters or a character string or just a plain string. The
characters must be inside parentheses, we'll discuss the significance of those later.

You signify a string by surrounding it in quotes. In Python you can use either single quotes (as above)
or double quotes: "a string". This allows you to include one type of quote within a string which is
surrounded by the other type - useful for apostrophes:

>>> print("Monty Python's Flying Circus has a ' within it...")

Monty Python's Flying Circus has a ' within it...

JavaScript and VBScript are both a bit more fussy about which types of quotes you can use and
where. In both of those languages I recommend sticking to double quotes where possible.

It's not just characters that can be printed:

Displaying Arithmetic Results

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>>> print(6 + 5)
11

Here we have printed the result of an arithmetic operation - we added six and five. Python recognized
the numbers as such and the plus sign and did the sum for us. It then printed the result.

So straight away you have a use for Python: it's a handy 'pocket calculator'!

Try a few more calculations. Use some other arithmetic operators:

subtract (-)
multiply (*)
divide (/)

We can combine multiple expressions like this:

>>> print( ((6 * 5) + (7 - 5)) / (7 + 1) )

4.0

Notice the way I used parentheses to group the numbers together. Python sees this as:

((6 * 5) + (7 - 5)) / (7 + 1)
=> (30 + 2) / 8
=> 32 / 8
=> 4

What happens if you type the same sequence without the parentheses?

>>> print(6 * 5 + 7 - 5 / 7 + 1)
37.2857142857

This is because Python will evaluate the multiplication and division before the addition and
subtraction. So Python sees it as:

(6*5) + 7 - (5/7) + 1
=> 30 + 7 - 0.7143 + 1
=> 37 - 0.7143 + 1
=> 38 - 0.7143
=> 37.2857...

This is usually what you would expect mathematically speaking but it may not be what you expect as
a programmer! Most programming languages have rules to determine the sequence of evaluation of
operations and this is known as operator precedence. You will need to look at the reference
documentation for each language to see how it works. With Python it's usually what logic and
intuition would suggest, but occasionally it won't be...

As a general rule it's safest to include the parentheses to make sure you get what you want when
dealing with long series of sums like this.

One other thing to note:

>>> print(5/2)
2.5

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Which is pretty much what you would expect. But if you want to keep with whole numbers you can
find the whole result and remainder by using the // sign like a division operator. Python will print the
dividend:

>>> print(5//2)
2

And to get the remainder we use the modulo operator ( %):

>>> print(5%2)
1
>>> print(7//4)
1
>>> print(7%4)
3

% is known as the modulo or mod operator and in other languages is often seen as MOD or similar. In
fact in Python we can get both result(the dividend) and remainder(modulo) by using the
divmod() function:

>>> print( divmod(7,4) )

(1, 3)

Experiment and you will soon get the idea. Why bother? Well, it turns out that so called integer
arithmetic is very useful in programming. As a simple example we can tell whether a number is odd or
even by dividing by two and checking whether the remainder was zero (i.e. it is even) or not (so it
must be odd). Like this:

>>> print( 47 % 2 )
1

So we know 47 is odd. Now you could probably tell that just by looking at the last digit, 7. But
imagine you were reading the data from a file or a user was typing it in. Then your program has to
figure out whether it's odd or even by itself. You, the programmer, can't help it out by checking
visually. That's one occasion when modulo (%) comes in very handy.

Mixing Strings and Numbers

>>> print( 'The total is: ', 23+45)

The total is: 68

You've seen that we can print strings and numbers. Now we combine the two in one print statement,
separating them with a comma. We can extend this feature by combining it with a useful Python trick
for outputting data called a format string:

>>> print( "The sum of %d and %d is: %d" % (7,18,7+18))

The sum of 7 and 18 is: 25

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In this statement the format string contains '%' markers within it. These have nothing to do with the
modulo operator we discussed above, instead they have a special meaning when used within a string
like this. Unfortunately this double usage of % means you have to read carefully to determine the
context and therefore what role the % is playing!

The letter d after the % tells Python that a 'decimal number' should be placed there. The values to fill in
the markers are obtained from the values inside the parenthesised expression following the % sign on
its own. It is important that the number of values in the final parentheses matches the number of %
markers inside the string. (If this all sounds a little confusing practice a few variations on the line
above and with the information following and it will soon start to make sense.)

There are other letters that can be placed after the % markers. Some of these include:

%s - for string
%x - for hexadecimal number
%0.2f - for a real number with a maximum of 2 decimal places
%04d - pad the number out to 4 digits with 0's

The Python documentation gives lots more... Note however that this style of formatting has been
replaced in Python v3 by an even more powerful (but more complex) style which we will discuss in
more detail when we get to the Handling Text topic later.

In fact you can print any Python object with the print function. Sometimes the result will not be what
you hoped for (perhaps just a description of what kind of object it is) but you can always print it.

Powering Up

>>> import sys

Now this is a strange one. If you've tried it you'll see that it apparently does nothing. But that's not
really true. To understand what happened we need to look at the architecture of Python (for non
Python programmers, bear with me there will be a similar mechanism available to you too!)

When you start Python there are a bunch of functions and commands available to you called built-ins,
because they are built in to the Python core. However Python can extend the list of functions available
by incorporating extension modules. - It's a bit like buying a new tool in your favourite DIY store and
adding it to your tool box. The tool is the sys part and the import operation puts it into the tool
box.

In fact what this command does is makes available a whole bunch of new 'tools' in the shape of Python
functions which are defined in a module called 'sys'. This is how Python is extended to do all sorts of
clever things that are not built in to the basic system. In fact there are over a hundred modules in the
standard library that you get with Python. You can even create your own modules and import and
use them, just like the modules provided with Python when you installed it. We'll get to that later.
There are also many more that you can download from the internet. In fact, any time you start a new
project that is not covered by modules in the standard library, remember to do a Google search, there
is probably something out there that can help you.

So how do we use these new tools?

A Quick exit

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>>> sys.exit()

Whoops! What happened there? Simply that we executed the exit function defined in the
sys module. That statement causes Python to exit.

Note 1: Normally you exit Python by typing the End Of File(EOF) character at the >>> prompt -
CTRL-Z on DOS or CTRL-D on Unix. In a development tool you exit using the File->Exit menu
etc as usual.

Note 2: If you try this inside a development tool like IDLE the tool will probably catch the attempt to
exit and display a message saying something about SystemExit. Don't worry, that means the program
is working and the tool is just saving you the bother of restarting from scratch.

Notice that exit had parentheses after it. That's because exit is a function defined in sys and when
we call a Python function we need to supply the parentheses even if there's nothing inside them!

Try typing sys.exit without the parentheses. Python responds by telling you that exit is a function
rather than by executing it!

One final thing to notice is that the last two statements are actually only useful in combination. That
is, to exit from Python other than by typing EOF you need to type:

>>> import sys

>>> sys.exit()

This is a sequence of two statements! Now we're getting closer to real programming...

Using JavaScript
Unfortunately in JavaScript there is no easy way to type the commands in and see them being
executed immediately as we have been doing with Python. However we can type all of the simple
commands we used above into a single HTML file and load it into a browser. That way we will see
what they look like in JavaScript:

<html><body>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.write('Hello there!<BR>');
document.write("Monty Python\'s Flying Circus has a \' within it<BR>");
document.write(6+5);
document.write("<BR>");
document.write( ((8 * 4) + (7 - 3)) / (2 + 4) );
document.write("<BR>");
document.write( 5/2 );
document.write("<BR>");
document.write( 5 % 2 );
</script>
</body></html>

And the output should look like this:

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Notice that we had to write <BR> to force a new line. That's because JavaScript writes its output as
HTML and HTML wraps lines into as wide a line as your browser window will allow. To force a line
break we have to use the HTML symbol for a new line which is <BR>.

And VBScript too...

Like JavaScript we have to create a file with our VBScript commands and open it in a browser. The
commands that we have seen, written in VBScript look like this:

<html><body>
<script type="text/vbscript">
MsgBox "Hello There!"
MsgBox "Monty Python's Flying Circus has a ' in it"
MsgBox 6 + 5
MsgBox ((8 * 4) + (7 - 3)) / (2 + 4)
MsgBox 5/2
MsgBox 5 MOD 2
</script>
</body></html>

And the output should consist of lots of dialog boxes each presenting the output from one line of the
program.

One point to note is that you cannot start a string using a single quote in VBScript (We'll see why in a
later topic) although you can include single quotes inside double quoted strings. To include a double
quote inside a double quoted string we have to use a function called Chr which returns the character
for a given ASCII character code. It's all very messy but an example should show how it works:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim qt
qt = Chr(34)
MsgBox qt & "Go Away!" & qt & " he cried"
</script>

Note that you can find out the ASCII code for any character by using the Character Map applet in
Windows, or by visiting this web site and looking up the decimal value or, as a last resort, by using
the following bit of JavaScript(!) and replacing the double quote character with the character you
want:

<script type="text/javascript">
var code, chr = '"'; // put the character of interest here
code = chr.charCodeAt(0);
document.write("<BR>The ASCII code of " + chr + " is " + code);
</script>

Don't worry about what it means just yet, we'll get to it eventually for now just use it should you be
forced to find out an ASCII value.

That's our first look at programming, it wasn't too painful was it? Before we continue though we need
to take a look at the raw materials of programming, namely data and what we can do with it.

Points to remember

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Even a single command is a program

Python does math almost the way you'd expect
To get a fractional result you must use a fractional number
You can combine text and numbers using the % format operator
Quit with import sys; sys.exit()

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Data 12/04/2010

The Raw Materials

What will we cover?
What Data is
What Variables are
Data Types and what to do with them
Defining our own data types

Introduction
In any creative activity we need three basic ingredients: tools, materials and techniques. For example
when I paint the tools are my brushes, pencils and palettes. The techniques are things like ‘washes’,
wet on wet, blending, spraying etc. Finally the materials are the paints, paper and water. Similarly
when I program, my tools are the programming languages, operating systems and hardware. The
techniques are the programming constructs that we discussed in the previous section and the material
is the data that I manipulate. In this chapter we look at the materials of programming.

This is quite a long section and by its nature you might find it a bit dry, the good news is that you
don’t need to read it all at once. The chapter starts off by looking at the most basic data types
available, then moves on to how we handle collections of items and finally looks at some more
advanced material. It should be possible to drop out of the chapter after the collections material, cover
a couple of the following chapters and then come back to this one as we start to use the more
advanced bits.

Data
Data is one of those terms that everyone uses but few really understand. My dictionary defines it as:

"facts or figures from which conclusions can be inferred; information"

That's not too much help but at least gives a starting point. Let’s see if we can clarify things by
looking at how data is used in programming terms. Data is the “stuff”, the raw information, that your
program manipulates. Without data a program cannot perform any useful function. Programs
manipulate data in many ways, often depending on the type of the data. Each data type also has a
number of operations - things that you can do to it. For example we’ve seen that we can add numbers
together. Addition is an operation on the number type of data. Data comes in many types and we’ll
look at each of the most common types and the operations available for that type:

Variables
Data is stored in the memory of your computer. You can liken this to the big wall full of boxes used in
mail rooms to sort the mail. You can put a letter in any box but unless the boxes are labeled with the
destination address it’s pretty meaningless. Variables are the labels on the boxes in your computer's
memory.

Knowing what data looks like is fine, so far as it goes but to manipulate it we need to be able to
access it and that’s what variables are used for. In programming terms we can create instances of data
types and assign them to variables. A variable is a reference to a specific area somewhere in the
computers memory. These areas hold the data. In some computer languages a variable must match the

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type of data that it points to. Any attempt to assign the wrong type of data to such a variable will
cause an error. Some programmers prefer this type of system, known as static typing because it can
help to prevent some subtle bugs which are hard to detect.

Variable names follow certain rules dependent on the programming language. Every language has its
own rules about which characters are allowed or not allowed. Some languages, including Python and
JavaScript, take notice of the case and are therefore called case sensitive languages, others, like
VBScript don't care. Case sensitive languages require a little bit more care from the programmer to
avoid mistakes, but a consistent approach to naming variables will help a lot. One common style
which we will use a lot is to start variable names with a lower case letter and use a capital letter for
each first letter of subsequent words in the name, like this:

aVeryLongVariableNameWithCapitalisedStyle

We won't discuss the specific rules about which characters are legal in our languages but if you
consistently use a style like that shown you shouldn't have too many problems.

In Python a variable takes the type of the data assigned to it. It will keep that type and you will be
warned if you try to mix data in strange ways - like trying to add a string to a number. (Recall the
example error message? It was an example of just that kind of error.) We can change the type of data
that a variable points to by reassigning the variable.

>>> q = 7 # q is now a number

>>> print( q )
7
>>> q = "Seven" # reassign q to a string
>>> print( q )
Seven

Note that the variable q was set to point to the number 7 initially. It maintained that value until we
made it point at the character string "Seven". Thus, Python variables maintain the type of whatever
they point to, but we can change what they point to simply by reassigning the variable. We can check
the type of a variable by using the type() function:

>>> print( type(q) )

At the point of reassignment the original data is 'lost' and Python will erase it from memory (unless
another variable points at it too) this erasing is known as garbage collection.

Garbage collection can be likened to the mail room clerk who comes round once in a while and
removes any packets that are in boxes with no labels. If he can't find an owner or address on the
packets he throws them in the garbage. Let’s take a look at some examples of data types and see how
all of this fits together.

VBScript and JavaScript variables

Both JavaScript and VBScript introduce a subtle variation in the way we use variables. In both
languages it is considered good practice that variables be declared before being used. This is a
common feature of compiled languages and of strictly typed languages. There is a big advantage in

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doing this in that if a spelling error is made when using a variable the translator can detect that an
unknown variable has been used and flag an error. The disadvantage is, of course, some extra typing
required by the programmer.

VBScript

In VBScript the declaration of a variable is done via the Dim statement, which is short for Dimension.
This is a throwback to VBScript's early roots in BASIC and in turn to Assembler languages before
that. In those languages you had to tell the assembler how much memory a variable would use - its
dimensions. The abbreviation has carried through from there.

A variable declaration in VBScript looks like this:

Dim aVariable

Once declared we can proceed to assign values to it just like we did in Python. We can declare several
variables in the one Dim statement by listing them separated by commas:

Dim aVariable, another, aThird

Assignment then looks like this:

aVariable = 42
another = "This is a nice short sentence."
aThird = 3.14159

There is another keyword, Let that you may occasionally see. This is another throwback to BASIC
and because it's not really needed you very rarely see it. In case you do, it's used like this:

Let aVariable = 22

I will not be using Let in this tutor.

JavaScript

In JavaScript you can pre-declare variables with the var keyword and, like VBScript, you can list
several variables in a single var statement:

var aVariable, another, aThird;

JavaScript also allows you to initialize (or define) the variables as part of the var statement. Like this:

var aVariable = 42;

var another = "A short phrase", aThird = 3.14159;

This saves a little typing but otherwise is no different to VBScript's two step approach to variables.
You can also declare and initialise JavaScript variables without using var, in the same way that you
do in Python:

aVariable = 42;

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But JavaScript afficianados consider it good practice to use the var statement, so I will do so in this
tutor.

Hopefully this brief look at VBScript and JavaScript variables has demonstrated the difference
between declaration and definition of variables. Python variables are declared by defining them.

Primitive Data Types

Primitive data types are so called because they are the most basic types of data we can manipulate.
More complex data types are really combinations of the primitive types. These are the building blocks
upon which all the other types are built, the very foundation of computing. They include letters,
numbers and something called a boolean type.

Character Strings
We've already seen these. They are literally any string or sequence of characters that can be printed on
your screen. (In fact there can even be non-printable control characters too).

In Python, strings can be represented in several ways:

With single quotes:

'Here is a string'

With double quotes:

"Here is a very similar string"

With triple double quotes:

""" Here is a very long string that can

if we wish span several lines and Python will
preserve the lines as we type them..."""

One special use of the latter form is to build in documentation for Python functions that we create
ourselves - we'll see this later. (You can use triple single quotes but I do not recommend that since it
can become hard to tell whether it is triple single quotes or a double quote and a single quote
together.)

You can access the individual characters in a string by treating it as an array of characters (see arrays
below). There are also usually some operations provided by the programming language to help you
manipulate strings - find a sub string, join two strings, copy one to another etc.

It is worth pointing out that some languages have a separate type for characters themselves, that is for
a single character. In this case strings are literally just collections of these character values. Python by
contrast just uses a string of length 1 to store an individual character, no special syntax is required.

String Operators

There are a number of operations that can be performed on strings. Some of these are built in to
Python but many others are provided by modules that you must import (as we did with sys in the
Simple Sequences section).

String operators

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Operator Description
S1 + S2 Concatenation of S1 and S2
S1 * N N repetitions of S1

We can see these in action in the following examples:

>>> print( 'Again and ' + 'again' ) # string concatenation

Again and again
>>> print( 'Repeat ' * 3 ) # string repetition
Repeat Repeat Repeat
>>> print( 'Again ' + ('and again ' * 3) ) # combine '+' and '*'
Again and again and again and again

We can also assign character strings to variables:

>>> s1 = 'Again '

>>> s2 = 'and again '
>>> print( s1 + (s2 * 3) )
Again and again and again and again

Notice that the last two examples produced the same output.

There are lots of other things we can do with strings but we'll look at those in more detail in a later
topic after we've gained a bit more basic knowledge. One important thing to note about strings in
Python is that they cannot be modified. That is, you can only create a new string with some of the
characters changed but you cannot directly alter any of the characters within a string. A data type that
cannot be altered is known as an immutable type.

VBScript String Variables

In VBScript all variables are called variants, that is they can hold any type of data and VBScript tries
to convert it to the appropriate type as needed. Thus you may assign a number to a variable but if you
use it as a string VBScript will try to convert it for you. In practice this is similar to what Python's
print command does but extended to any VBScript command. You can give VBScript a hint that you
want a numeric value treated as a string by enclosing it in double quotes:

<script type="text/vbscript">
MyString = "42"
MsgBox MyString
</script>

We can join VBScript strings together, a process known as concatenation, using the & operator:

<script type="text/vbscript">
MyString = "Hello" & "World"
MsgBox MyString
</script>

JavaScript Strings

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JavaScript strings are enclosed in either single or double quotes. In JavaScript you should
declare variables before we use them. This is easily done using the var keyword. Thus to declare and
define two string variables in JavaScript we do this:

<script type="text/javascript">
var aString, another;
aString = "Hello ";
another = "World";
document.write(aString + another)
</script>

Finally JavaScript also allows us to create String objects. We will discuss objects a little later in this
topic but for now just think of String objects as being strings with some extra features. The main
difference is that we create them slightly differently:

<script type="text/javascript">
var aStringObj, anotherObj;
aStringObj = String("Hello ");
anotherObj = String("World");
document.write(aStringObj + anotherObj);
</script>

You are probably thinking thats an awful lot of extra typing to achieve the same as before? You
would be right in this case, but string objects do offer some advantages in other situations as we will
see later.

Integers
Integers are whole numbers from a large negative value through to a large positive value. That’s an
important point to remember. Normally we don’t think of numbers being restricted in size but on a
computer there are upper and lower limits. The size of this upper limit is known as MAXINT and
depends on the number of bits used on your computer to represent a number. On most current
computers and programming languages it's 32 bits so MAXINT is around 2 billion (however
VBScript is limited to about +/-32000).

Numbers with positive and negative values are known as signed integers. You can also get unsigned
integers which are restricted to positive numbers, including zero. This means there is a bigger
maximum number available of around 2 * MAXINT or 4 billion on a 32 bit computer since we can
use the space previously used for representing negative numbers to represent more positive numbers.

Because integers are restricted in size to MAXINT adding two integers together where the total is
greater than MAXINT causes the total to be wrong. On some systems/languages the wrong value is
just returned as is (usually with some kind of secret flag raised that you can test if you think it might
have been set). Normally an error condition is raised and either your program can handle the error or
the program will exit. VBScript and JavaScript both convert the number into a different format that
they can handle, albeit with a small loss of accuracy. Python is a little different in that Python uses
something called a Long Integer, which is a Python specific feature allowing virtually unlimited size
integers.

>>> x = 123456700 * 34567338738999

>>> print( x )
4267569568498977843300
>>> print( type(x) )

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Notice that the result, although considered an int type by Python is much bigger than the value you
would normally expect from a computer. The equivalent code in VBScript or JavaScript results in the
number being displayed in a different format to the integer we expect. We'll find out more about that
in the section on Real Numbers below.

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim x
x = 123456700 * 34567338738999
MsgBox CStr(x)
</script>

Arithmetic Operators

We've already seen most of the arithmetic operators that you need in the 'Simple Sequences' section,
however to recap:
Python Arithmetic Operators

Operator Example Description

M+N Addition of M and N
M-N Subtraction of N from M
M*N Multiplication of M and N
M/N Division of M by N. The result will be a real number (see below)
M%N Modulo: find the remainder of M divided by N
M**N Exponentiation: M to the power of N

We haven’t seen the last one before so let’s look at an example of creating some integer variables and
using the exponentiation operator:

>>> i1 = 2 # create an integer and assign it to i1

>>> i2 = 4
>>> i3 = i1**i2 # assign the result of 2 to the power 4 to i3
>>> print( i3 )
16
>>> print( 2**4 ) # confirm the result
16

Shortcut operators

One very common operation that is carried out while programming is incrementing a variable's value.
Thus if we have a variable called x with a value of 42 and we want to increase its value to 43 we can
do it like this:

>>> x = 42
>>> print( x )
>>> x = x + 1
>>> print( x )

Notice the line

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x = x + 1

This is not sensible in mathematics but in programming it is. What it means is that x takes on the
previous value of x plus 1. If you have done a lot of math this might take a bit of getting used to, but
basically the equal sign in this case could be read as becomes. So that it reads: x becomes x + 1.

Now it turns out that this type of operation is so common in practice that Python (and JavaScript)
provides a shortcut operator to save some typing:

>>> x += 1
>>> print( x )

This means exactly the same as the previous assignment statement but is shorter. And for consistency
similar shortcuts exist for the other arithmetic operators:
Shortcut Operators

Operator Example Description

M += N M=M+N
M -= N M=M-N
M *= N M=M*N
M /= N M=M/N
M %= N M=M%N

VBScript Integers

As I said earlier VBScript integers are limited to a lower value of MAXINT corresponding to a 16 bit
value, namely about +/- 32000. If you need an integer bigger than that you can use a long integer
which is the same size as a standard Python integer. There is also a byte type which is an 8 bit
number with a maximum size of 255. In practice you will usually find the standard integer type
sufficient. If the result of an operation is bigger than MAXINT then VBScript automatically converts
the result to a real number (see below)

All the usual arithmetic operators are supported. Modulo is represented differently in VBScript, using
the MOD operator. (We actually saw that in the Simple Sequences topic.) Exponentiation too is
different with the caret (^) symbol being used instead of Python's **.

JavaScript Numbers

It will be no surprise to discover that JavaScript too has a numeric type. It too is an object as we'll
describe later and its called a Number, original eh? :-)

A JavaScript number can also be Not a Number or NaN. This is a special version of the Number
object which represents invalid numbers, usually the result of some operation which is mathematically
impossible. The point of NaN is that it allows us to check for certain kinds of error without actually
breaking the program. JavaScript also has special number versions to represent positive and negative
infinity, a rare feature in a programming language. JavaScript number objects can be either integers or
real numbers, which we look at next.

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JavaScript uses mostly the same operators as Python but exponentiation is done using a special
JavaScript object called Math. We will cover this a bit later in the tutorial when we take a closer look
at modules.

Real Numbers
These include fractions. (I'm using the OED definition of fraction here. Some US correspondents tell
me the US term fraction means something more specific. I simply mean any number that is not a
whole number). They can represent very large numbers, much bigger than MAXINT, but with less
precision. That is to say that 2 real numbers which should be identical may not seem to be when
compared by the computer. This is because the computer only approximates some of the lowest
details. Thus 5.0 could be represented by the computer as 4.9999999.... or 5.000000....01. These
approximations are close enough for most purposes but occasionally they become important! If you
get a funny result when using real numbers, bear this in mind.

Real numbers, also known as Floating Point numbers have the same operations as integers with the
addition of the capability to truncate the number to an integer value.

Python, VBScript and JavaScript all support real numbers. In Python we create them by simply
specifying a number with a decimal point in it, as we saw in the Simple Sequences topic. In VBScript
and JavaScript there is no clear distinction between integers and real numbers, just use them and
mostly the language will pretty much sort itself out.

Complex or Imaginary Numbers

If you have a scientific or mathematical background you may be wondering about complex numbers?
If you haven't, you may not even have heard of complex numbers, in which case you can safely jump
to the next heading because you don't need them! Anyhow some programming languages, including
Python, provide built in support for the complex type while others provide a library of functions which
can operate on complex numbers. And before you ask, the same applies to matrices too.

In Python a complex number is represented as:

(real+imaginaryj)

Thus a simple complex number addition looks like:

>>> M = (2+4j)
>>> N = (7+6j)
>>> print( M + N )
(9+10j)

All of the integer operations also apply to complex numbers.

Neither VBScript nor JavaScript offer support for complex numbers.

Boolean Values - True and False

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This strange sounding type is named after a 19th century mathematician, George Boole who studied
logic. Like the heading says, this type has only 2 values - either true or false. Some languages support
Boolean values directly, others use a convention whereby some numeric value (often 0) represents
false and another (often 1 or -1) represents true. Up until version 2.2 Python did this, however since
version 2.3 Python supports Boolean values directly, using the values True and False.

Boolean values are sometimes known as "truth values" because they are used to test whether
something is true or not. For example if you write a program to backup all the files in a directory you
might backup each file then ask the operating system for the name of the next file. If there are no
more files to save it will return an empty string. You can then test to see if the name is an empty string
and store the result as a boolean value (True if it is empty, False if it isn't). You'll see how we would
use that result later on in the tutorial.
Boolean (or Logical) Operators

Operator Example Description Effect

A and B AND True if A,B are both True, False otherwise.
True if either or both of A,B are true. False if both A and B are
A or B OR
false
A == B Equality True if A is equal to B
A != B
or Inequality True if A is NOT equal to B.
A <> B
not B Negation True if B is not True

Note: the last one operates on a single value, the others all compare two values.

VBScript, like Python has a Boolean type with the values True and False.

JavaScript also supports a Boolean type but this time the values are true and false (note, with a
lowercase first letter).

Finally the different languages have slightly different names for the Boolean type internally, in Python
it is bool, in VBScript and JavaScript it is Boolean. Most of the time you won't need to worry about
that because we tend not to create variables of Boolean types but simply use the results in tests.

Collections
Computer science has built a whole discipline around studying collections and their various behaviors.
Sometimes collections are called containers or sequences. In this section we will look first of all at the
collections supported in Python, VBScript and JavaScript, then we’ll conclude with a brief summary
of some other collection types you might come across in other languages.

List

We are all familiar with lists in everyday life. A list is just a sequence of items. We can add items to a
list or remove items from the list. Usually, where the list is written paper we can't insert items in the
middle of a list only at the end. However if the list is in electronic format - in a word processor say -
then we can insert items anywhere in the list.

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We can also search a list to check whether something is already in the list or not. But you have to find
the item you need by stepping through the list from front to back checking each item to see if it's the
item you want. Lists are a fundamental collection type found in many modern programming
languages.

Python lists are built into the language. They can do all the basic list operations we discussed above
and in addition have the ability to index the elements inside the list. By indexing I mean that we can
refer to a list element by its sequence number (assuming the first element starts at zero).

In VBScript there are no lists as such but other collection types which we discuss later can simulate
their features.

In JavaScript there are no lists as such but almost everything you need to do with a list can be done
using a JavaScript array which is another collection type that we discuss a little later.

List operations

Python provides many operations on collections. Nearly all of them apply to Lists and a subset apply
to other collection types, including strings which are just a special type of list - a list of characters. To
create and access a list in Python we use square brackets. You can create an empty list by using a pair
of square brackets with nothing inside, or create a list with contents by separating the values with
commas inside the brackets:

>>> aList = []
>>> another = [1,2,3]
>>> print( another )
[1, 2, 3]

We can access the individual elements using an index number, where the first element is 0, inside
square brackets. For example to access the third element, which will be index number 2 since we start
from zero, we do this:

>>> print( another[2] )

3

We can also change the values of the elements of a list in a similar fashion:

>>> another[2] = 7
>>> print( another )
[1, 2, 7]

Notice that the third element (index 2) changed from 3 to 7.

You can use negative index numbers to access members from the end of the list. This is most
commonly done using -1 to get the last item:

>>> print( another[-1] )

7

We can add new elements to the end of a list using the append() operation:

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>>> aList.append(42)
>>> print( aList )
[42]

We can even hold one list inside another, thus if we append our second list to the first:

>>> aList.append(another)
>>> print( aList )
[42, [1, 2, 7]]

Notice how the result is a list of two elements but the second element is itself a list (as shown by the
[]’s around it). We can now access the element 7 by using a double index:

>>> print( aList[1][2] )

7

The first index, 1, extracts the second element which is in turn a list. The second index, 2, extracts the
third element of the sublist.

This nesting of lists one inside the other is extremely useful since it effectively allows us to build tables
of data, like this:

>>> row1 = [1,2,3]

>>> row2 = ['a','b','c']
>>> table = [row1, row2]
>>> print( table )
[ [1,2,3], ['a','b','c'] ]
>>> element2 = table[0][1]
>>> print( element2 )
2

We could use this to create an address book where each entry was a list of name and address details.
For example, here is such an address book with two entries:

>>> addressBook = [
... ['Fred', '9 Some St',' Anytown', '0123456789'],
... ['Rose', '11 Nother St', 'SomePlace', '0987654321']
... ]
>>>

Notice that we constructed the nested list all on one line. That is because Python sees that the number
of opening and closing brackets don't match and keeps on reading input until they do. This can be a
very effective way of quickly constructing complex data structures while making the overall structure
- a list of lists in this case - clear to the reader. (If you are using IDLE you won't see the ... prompt,
just a blank line.)

As an exercise try extracting Fred's telephone number - element 3, from the first row - remembering
that the indexes start at zero. Also try adding a few new entries of your own using the
append() operation described above.

Note that when you exit Python your data will be lost, however you will find out how to preserve it
once we reach the topic on files.

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The opposite of adding elements is, of course, removing them and to do that we use the del
command:

>>> del aList[1]

>>> print( aList )
[42]

Notice that del does not require parentheses around the value, unlike the print function. This is
because del is technically a command not a function. The distinction is subtle and you can put
parentheses around the value for consistency if you prefer, it will still work OK.

If we want to join two lists together to make one we can use the same concatenation operator ‘+’ that
we saw for strings:

>>> newList = aList + another

>>> print( newList )
[42, 1, 2, 7]

Notice that this is slightly different to when we appended the two lists earlier, then there were 2
elements, the second being a list, this time there are 4 elements because the elements of the second list
have each, individually, been added to newList. This time if we access element 1, instead of getting a
sublist, as we did previously, we will only get 1 returned:

>>> print( newList[1] )

1

We can also apply the multiplication sign as a repetition operator to populate a list with multiples of
the same value:

>>> zeroList = [0] * 5

>>> print( zeroList )
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0]

We can find the index of a particular element in a list using the index() operation, like this:

>>> print( [1,3,5,7].index(5) )

2
>>> print( [1,3,5,7].index(9) )
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: list.index(x): x not in list

Notice that trying to find the index of something that's not in the list results in an error. We will look
at ways to test whether something is in a list or not in a later topic.

Finally, we can determine the length of a list using the built-in len() function:

>>> print( len(aList) )

1
>>> print( len(newList) )
4
>>> print( len(zeroList) )

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Neither JavaScript nor VBScript directly support a list type although as we will see later they do have
an Array type that can do many of the things that Python's lists can do.

Tuple

Not every language provides a tuple construct but in those that do it’s extremely useful. A tuple is
really just an arbitrary collection of values which can be treated as a unit. In many ways a tuple is like
a list, but with the significant difference that tuples are immutable which, you may recall, means that
you can’t change them nor append to them once created. In Python, tuples are simply represented by
parentheses containing a comma separated list of values, like so:

>>> aTuple = (1,3,5)

>>> print( aTuple[1] ) # use indexing like a list
3
>> aTuple[2] = 7 # error, can’t change a tuple’s elements
Traceback (innermost last):
File "", line 1, in ?
aTuple[2] = 7
TypeError: object doesn't support item assignment

The main things to remember are that while parentheses are used to define the tuple, square brackets
are used to index it and you can’t change a tuple once it's created. Otherwise most of the list
operations also apply to tuples.

Finally, although you cannot change a tuple you can effectively add members using the addition
operator because this actually creates a new tuple. Like this:

>>> tup1 = (1,2,3)

>>> tup2 = tup1 + (4,) # comma to make it a tuple rather than integer
>>> print( tup2 )
(1,2,3,4)

If we didn't use the trailing comma after the 4 then Python would have interpreted it as the integer 4
inside parentheses, not as a true tuple. But since you can't add integers to tuples it results in an error,
so we add the comma to tell Python to treat the parentheses as a tuple. Any time you need to
persuade Python that a single entry tuple really is a tuple add a trailing comma as we did here.

Neither VBScript nor JavaScript have any concept of tuples.

Dictionary or Hash

In the same way that a literal dictionary associates a meaning with a word a dictionary type contains a
value associated with a key, which may or may not be a string. The value can be retrieved by
‘indexing’ the dictionary with the key. Unlike a literal dictionary, the key doesn’t need to be a
character string (although it often is) but can be any immutable type including numbers and tuples.
Similarly the values associated with the keys can have any kind of data type. Dictionaries are usually
implemented internally using an advanced programming technique known as a hash table. For that
reason a dictionary may sometimes be referred to as a hash. This has nothing to do with drugs! :-)

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Because access to the dictionary values is via the key, you can only put in elements with unique keys.
Dictionaries are immensely useful structures and are provided as a built-in type in Python although in
many other languages you need to use a module or even build your own. We can use dictionaries in
lots of ways and we'll see plenty examples later, but for now, here's how to create a dictionary in
Python, fill it with some entries and read them back:

>>> dct = {}
>>> dct['boolean'] = "A value which is either true or false"
>>> dct['integer'] = "A whole number"
>>> print( dct['boolean'] )
A value which is either true or false

Notice that we initialize the dictionary with braces, then use square brackets to assign and read the
values.

Just as we did with lists we can initialize a dictionary as we create it using the following format:

>>> addressBook = {
... 'Fred' : ['Fred', '9 Some St',' Anytown', '0123456789'],
... 'Rose' : ['Rose', '11 Nother St', 'SomePlace', '0987654321']
... }
>>>

The key and value are separated by a colon and the pairs are separated by commas.

You can also specify a dictionary using a slightly different format (see below), which style you prefer
is mainly a matter of taste!

>>> book = dict(Fred=['Fred', '9 Some St',' Anytown', '0123456789'],

... Rose=['Rose', '11 Nother St', 'SomePlace', '0987654321'])
>>> print( book['Fred'][3] )
0123456789

Notice you don't need quotes around the key in the definition because Python assumes it is a string
(but you still need them to extract the values). In practice this limits its usefulness so I tend to prefer
the first version using braces.

Either way we have made our address book out of a dictionary which is keyed by name and stores our
lists as the values. Rather than work out the numerical index of the entry we want we can just use the
name to retrieve all the information, like this:

>>> print( addressBook['Rose'] )

['Rose', '11 Nother St', 'SomePlace', '0987654321']
>>> print( addressBook['Fred'][3] )
0123456789

In the second case we indexed the returned list to get only the telephone number. By creating some
variables and assigning the appropriate index values we can make this much easier to use:

>>> name = 0
>>> street = 1
>>> town = 2

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>>> tel = 3

And now we can use those variables to find out Rose's town:

>>> print( addressBook['Rose'][town] )

SomePlace

Notice that whereas 'Rose' was in quotes because the key is a string, the town is not because it is a
variable name and Python will convert it to the index value we assigned, namely 2. At this point our
Address Book is beginning to resemble a usable database application, thanks largely to the power of
dictionaries. It won't take a lot of extra work to save and restore the data and add a query prompt to
allow us to specify the data we want. We will do that as we progress through the other tutorial topics.

Of course we could use a dictionary to store the data too, then our address book would consist of a
dictionary whose keys were the names and the values were dictionaries whose keys were the field
names, like this:

addressBook = {
... 'Fred' : {'name': 'Fred',
... 'street': '9 Some St',
... 'town': 'Anytown',
... 'tel': '0123456789'},
... 'Rose' : {'name': 'Rose',
... 'street': '11 Nother St',
... 'town': 'SomePlace',
... 'tel': '0987654321'}
... }

Notice that this is a very readable format although it requires a lot more typing. Data stored in a
format where its meaning and content are combined in a human readable format is often referred to as
self-documenting data. Also, when we include a data structure inside another identical structure - a
dictionary inside a dictionary in this case - we call that nesting and the inner dictionary would be
called the nested dictionary.

In practice we access this data in a very similar way to the list with named indexes:

>>> print( addressBook['Rose']['town'] )

SomePlace

Notice the extra quotes around town. Otherwise it's exactly the same. One advantage of using this
approach is that we can insert new fields and the existing code will not break whereas with the named
indexes we would need to go back and change all of the index values. If we used the same data in
several programs that could be a lot of work. Thus a little bit of extra typing now could save us a lot
of extra effort in the future.

Due to their internal structure dictionaries do not support very many of the collection operators that
we’ve seen so far. None of the concatenation, repetition or appending operations work. (Although
you can of course assign new key/value pairs directly as we saw at the beginning of the section.) To
assist us in accessing the dictionary keys there is an operation that we can use, keys(), which returns
a list of all the keys in a dictionary. For example to get a list of all the names in our address book we
could do:

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>>> print( addressBook.keys() )

['Fred','Rose']

Note however that dictionaries do not store their keys in the order in which they are inserted so you
may find the keys appear in a strange order, indeed the order may even change over time. Don't worry
about that, you can still use the keys to access your data and the right value will still come out OK.

VBScript Dictionaries

VBScript provides a dictionary object which offers similar facilities to the Python dictionary but the
usage is slightly different. To create a VBScript dictionary we have to declare a variable to hold the
object, then create the object, finally we can add entries to the new dictionary, like this:

Dim dict ' Create a variable.

Set dict = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
dict.Add "a", "Athens" ' Add some keys and items.
dict.Add "b", "Belgrade"
dict.Add "c", "Cairo"

Notice that the CreateObject function specifies that we are creating a

"Scripting.Dictionary" object, that is a Dictionary object from the VBScript's
Scripting module. Don't worry too much about that for now, we'll discuss it in more depth when
we look at objects later in the tutor. Hopefully you can at least recognize and recall the concept of
using an object from a module from the simple sequences topic earlier. The other point to notice is
that we must use the keyword Set when assigning an object to a variable in VBScript.

Now we access the data like so:

item = dict.Item("c") ' Get the item.

dict.Item("c") = "Casablanca" ' Change the item

There are also operations to remove an item, get a list of all the keys, check that a key exists etc.

Here is a complete but simplified version of our address book example in VBScript:

<script type="text/VBScript">
Dim addressBook
Set addressBook = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
addressBook.Add "Fred", "Fred, 9 Some St, Anytown, 0123456789"
addressBook.Add "Rose", "Rose, 11 Nother St, SomePlace, 0987654321"

MsgBox addressBook.Item("Rose")
</script>

This time, instead of using a list, we have stored all the data as a single string. (This of course makes it
much harder to extract individual fields as we did with the list or dictionary.) We then access and print
Rose's details in a message box.

JavaScript Dictionaries

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JavaScript doesn't really have a dictionary object of its own, although if you are using Internet
Explorer you can get access to the VBScript Scripting.Dictionary object discussed above, with
all of the same facilities. But since it's really the same object I won't cover it further here. Finally
JavaScript arrays can be used very much like dictionaries but we'll discuss that in the array section
below.
If you're getting a bit fed up, you can jump to the next chapter at this point. Remember to
come back and finish this one when you start to come across types of data we haven't
mentioned so far.

Other Collection Types

Array or Vector

The array is one of the earlier collection types in computing history. It is basically a list of items which
are indexed for easy and fast retrieval. Usually you have to say up front how many items you want to
store and usually you can only store data of a single type. These fixed size and fixed type features are
what distinguishes arrays from the list data type discussed above. (Notice I said "usually" above.
That's because different languages have widely different ideas of what exactly constitutes an array that
it is hard to make definite rules.)

Python supports arrays through a module but it is rarely needed because the built in list type can
usually be used instead. VBScript and JavaScript both have arrays as a data type, so let's briefly look
at how they are used:

VBScript Arrays

In VBScript an array is a fixed length collection of data accessed by a numerical index. It is declared
and accessed like this:

Dim AnArray(42) ' A 43! element array

AnArray(0) = 27 ' index starts at 0
AnArray(1) = 49
myVariable = AnArray(1) ' read the value

Note the use of the Dim keyword. This dimensions the variable. This is a way of telling VBScript
about the variable, if you start your script with OPTION EXPLICIT VBScript will expect you to
Dim any variables you use, which many programming experts believe is good practice and leads to
more reliable programs. Also notice that we specify the last valid index, 42 in our example, which
means the array actually has 43 elements because it starts at 0.

Notice also that in VBScript we use parentheses to dimension and index the array, not the square
brackets used in Python and, as we'll soon see, JavaScript. Finally, recall that I said arrays usually only
store one type of data? Well in VBScript there is only one official type of data: the Variant, which in
turn can store any kind of VBScript value. So a VBScript array only stores Variants, which, in
practice, means they can store anything! Confusing? It is if you think about it too much, so don't, just
use them!

As with Python lists, we can declare multiple dimensional arrays to model tables of data, for our
address book example:

Dim MyTable(2,3) ' 3 rows, 4 columns

MyTable(0,0) = "Fred" ' Populate Fred's entry
MyTable(0,1) = "9 Some Street"

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MyTable(0,2) = "Anytown"
MyTable(0,3) = "0123456789"
MyTable(1,0) = "Rose" ' And now Rose...
...and so on...

Unfortunately there is no way to populate the data all in one go as we did with Python's lists, we have
to populate each field one by one. If we combine VBScript's dictionary and array capability we get
almost the same usability as we did with Python. It looks like this:

<script type="text/VBScript">
Dim addressBook
Set addressBook = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
Dim Fred(3)
Fred(0) = "Fred"
Fred(1) = "9 Some St"
Fred(2) = "Anytown"
Fred(3) = "0123456789"
addressBook.Add "Fred", Fred

MsgBox addressBook.Item("Fred")(3) ' Print the Phone Number

</script>

The final aspect of VBScript arrays that I want to consider is the fact that they don't need to be fixed
in size at all! However this does not mean we can just arbitrarily keep adding elements as we did with
our lists, rather we can explicitly resize an array. For this to happen we need to declare a Dynamic
array which we do, quite simply by omitting the size, like this:

Dim DynArray() ' no size specified

To resize it we use the ReDim command, like so:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim DynArray()
ReDim DynArray(5) ' Initial size = 5
DynArray(0) = 42
DynArray(4) = 26
MsgBox "Before: " & DynArray(4) ' prove that it worked
' Resize to 21 elements keeping the data we already stored
ReDim Preserve DynArray(20)
DynArray(15) = 73
MsgBox "After Preserve: " & DynArray(4) & " " & DynArray(15)' Old and new still ther
' Resize to 51 items but lose all data
Redim DynArray(50)
MsgBox "Without Preserve: " & DynArray(4) & " Oops, Where did it go?"
</script>

As you can see this is not so convenient as a list which adjusts its length automatically, but it does
give the programmer more control over how the program behaves. This level of control can, amongst
other things improve security since some viruses can exploit dynamically re-sizable data stores.

JavaScript Arrays

Arrays in JavaScript are in many ways a misnomer. They are called arrays but are actually a curious
mix of the features of lists, dictionaries and traditional arrays. At the simplest level we can declare a
new Array of 10 items of some type, like so:

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var items = new Array(10);

Notice the use of the keyword new to create the Array. This is similar in effect to the
CreateObject() function we used in VBScript to create a dictionary. Also notice that we use
parentheses to define the size of the array.

We can now populate and access the elements of the array like this:

items[4] = 42;
items[7] = 21;
var aValue = items[4];

So once again we use square brackets to access the array elements. And once again the indexes start
from zero.

However JavaScript arrays are not limited to storing a single type of value, we can assign anything to
an array element:

items[9] = "A short string";

var msg = items[9];

Also we can create arrays by providing a list of items, like so:

var moreItems = new Array("one","two","three",4,5,6);

aValue = moreItems[3];
msg = moreItems[0];

Another feature of JavaScript arrays is that we can determine the length through a hidden property
called length. We access the length like this:

var size = items.length;

Notice that once again the syntax for this uses an name.property format and is very like calling a
function in a Python module but without the parentheses.

As mentioned, JavaScript arrays start indexing at zero by default. However, JavaScript array indexes
are not limited to numbers, we can use strings too, and in this case they become almost identical to
dictionaries! We can also extend an array by simply assigning a value to an index beyond the current
maximum - which means we don't really need to specify a size when we create one, even though it is
considered good practice! We can see these features in use in the following code segment:

<script type="text/javascript">
var items = new Array(10);
var moreItems = new Array(1);
items[42] = 7;
moreItems["foo"] = 42;
msg = moreItems["foo"];
document.write("msg = " + msg + " and items[42] = " + items[42] );
</script>

Finally, let's look at our address book example once more, this time using JavaScript arrays:

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<script type="text/javascript">
var addressBook = new Array();
addressBook["Fred"] = new Array("Fred", "9 Some St", "Anytown", "0123456789");
addressBook["Rose"] = new Array("Rose", "11 Nother St", "SomePlace", "0987654321");

document.write(addressBook.Rose);
</script>

Notice that we can also access the key as if it were a property like length. JavaScript arrays really
are quite remarkably flexible data structures!

Stack

Think of a stack of trays in a restaurant. A member of staff puts a pile of clean trays on top and these
are removed one by one by customers. The trays at the bottom of the stack get used last (and least!).
Data stacks work the same way: you push an item onto the stack or pop one off. The item popped is
always the last one pushed. This property of stacks is sometimes called Last In First Out or LIFO.
One useful property of stacks is that you can reverse a list of items by pushing the list onto the stack
then popping it off again. The result will be the reverse of the starting list. Stacks are not built in to
Python, VBScript or JavaScript. You have to write some program code to implement the behavior.
Lists are usually the best starting point since like stacks they can grow as needed.

Try writing a stack using a Python list. Remember that you can append() to the end of a list and
del() items at a given index. Also you can use -1 to index the last item in a list. Armed with that
information you should be able to write a program that pushes 4 characters onto a list and then pops
them off again, printing them as you go. Just watch which order you call print and del! If you get it
right then they should print in the reverse order to how you pushed them on.

Bag

A bag is a collection of items with no specified order and it can contain duplicates. Bags usually have
operators to enable you to add, find and remove items. In our languages bags are just lists.

Set

A set has the property of only storing one of each item. You can usually test to see if an item is in a
set (membership), add or remove items and join two sets together in various ways corresponding to
set theory in math (e.g. union, intersect etc). Sets do not have any concept of order. VBScript and
JavaScript do not implement sets directly but you can approximate the behavior fairly easily using
dictionaries.

In Python sets are supported as a native data type.

The basic usage is like this:

>>> A = set() # create an empty set

>>> B = set([1,2,3]) # a set from a list
>>> C = {3,4,5} # initialisation, like [] in lists
>>> D = {6,7,8}
>>> # Now try out some set operations
>>> print( B.union(C) )
{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
>>> print( B.intersection(C) )
{3}

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>>> print( B.issuperset({2}) )

True
>>> print( {3}.issubset(C) )
True
>>> print( C.intersection(D) == A )
True

There are short hand versions of union and intersection too:

>>> print( B & C ) # same as B.intersection(C)

>>> print( B | C ) # same as B.union(C)

And finally you can test whether an item is in a set using the 'in' operator:

>>> print( 2 in B )
True

There are a number of other set operations but these should be enough for now.

Queue

A queue is rather like a stack except that the first item into a queue is also the first item out. This is
known as First In First Out or FIFO behavior. This is usually implemented using a list or array.

See if you can write a stack using a list. Remember you can add to a list with append() and delete
from a given position using del(). Try to add 4 characters to your stack and then get them out and
print them. They should print in the same order that you inserted them.

There's a whole bunch of other collection types but the ones we have covered are the main ones that
you are likely to come across. (And in fact we'll only be using a few of the ones we've discussed in
this tutor, but you will see the others mentioned in articles and in programming discussion groups!)

Files
As a computer user you should be very familiar with files - they form very basis of nearly everything
we do with computers. It should be no surprise then, to discover that most programming languages
provide a special file type of data. However files and the processing of them are so important that I
will put off discussing them till later when they get a whole topic to themselves.

Dates and Times

Dates and times are often given dedicated types in programming. At other times they are simply
represented as a large number (typically the number of seconds from some arbitrary date/time, such as
when the operating system was written!). In other cases the data type is what is known as a complex
type as described in the next section. This usually makes it easier to extract the month, day, hour etc.
We will take a brief look at using the Python time module in a later topic. Both VBScript and
JavaScript have their own mechanisms for handling time but I won't be discussing them further.

Complex/User Defined
Sometimes the basic types described above are inadequate even when combined in collections.
Sometimes, what we want to do is group several bits of data together then treat it as a single item. An
example might be the description of an address:

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a house number, a street and a town. Finally there's the post code or zip code.

Most languages allow us to group such information together in a record or structure or with the more
modern, object oriented version, a class.

VBScript

In VBScript such a record definition looks like:

Class Address
Public HsNumber
Public Street
Public Town
Public ZipCode
End Class

The Public keyword simply means that the data is accessible to the rest of the program, it's possible
to have Private data too, but we'll discuss that later in the course.

Python

In Python it's only a little different:

>>> class Address:

... def __init__(self, Hs, St, Town, Zip):
... self.HsNumber = Hs
... self.Street = St
... self.Town = Town
... self.ZipCode = Zip
...

That may look a little arcane but don't worry I’ll explain what the def __init__(...) and
self bits mean in the section on object orientation. One thing to note is that there are
two underscores at each end on __init__. This is a Python convention that we will discuss later.
Also you need to use the spacing shown above, as we'll explain later Python is a bit picky about
spacing. For now just make sure you copy the layout above.

Some people have had problems trying to type this example at the Python prompt. At the end of this
chapter you will find a box with more explanation, but you can just wait till we get the full story later
in the course if you prefer. If you do try typing it into Python then please make sure you copy the
indentation shown. As you'll see later Python is very particular about indentation levels.

The main thing I want you to recognize in all of this is that, just as we did in VBScript, we have
gathered several pieces of related data into a single structure called Address.

JavaScript

JavaScript provides a slightly strange name for its structure format, namely function! Now
functions are normally associated with operations not collections of data however in JavaScript's case
it can cover either. To create our address object in JavaScript we do this:

function Address(Hs,St,Town,Zip)
{
this.HsNum = Hs;

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this.Street = St;
this.Town = Town;
this.ZipCode = Zip;
}

Once again, ignore the syntax and use of the keyword this, the end result is a group of data items
that we call Address and can treat as a single unit.

OK, So we can create these data structures but what can we do with them once created? How do we
access the data items inside? That's our next mission.

Accessing Complex Types

We can assign a complex data type to a variable too, but to access the individual fields of the type we
must use some special access mechanism (which will be defined by the language). Usually this is a dot.

Using VBScript

To consider the case of the address class we defined above we would do this in VBScript:

Dim Addr
Set Addr = New Address

Addr.HsNumber = 7
Addr.Street = "High St"
Addr.Town = "Anytown"
Addr.ZipCode = "123 456"

MsgBox Addr.HsNumber & " " & Addr.Street & " " & Addr.Town

Here we first of all Dimension a new variable, Addr, using Dim then we use the Set keyword to
create a new instance of the Address class. Next we assign values to the fields of the new address
instance and finally we print out the address in a Message Box.

And in Python

And in Python, assuming you have already typed in the class definition above:

>>> Addr = Address(7,"High St","Anytown","123 456")

>>> print( Addr.HsNumber, Addr.Street, Addr.Town )
7 High St Anytown

Which creates an instance of our Address type and assigns it to the variable Addr. In Python we can
pass the field values to the new object when we create it. We then print out the HsNumber and
Street fields of the newly created instance using the dot operator. You could, of course, create
several new Address instances each with their own individual values of house number, street etc. Why
not experiment with this yourself? Can you think of how this could be used in our address book
example from earlier in the topic?

JavaScript too

The JavaScript mechanism is very similar to the others but has a couple of twists, as we'll see in a
moment. However the basic mechanism is straightforward and the one I recommend you use:

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var addr = new Address(7, "High St", "Anytown", "123 456");

document.write(addr.HsNum + " " + addr.Street + " " + addr.Town);

One final mechanism that we can use in JavaScript is to treat the object like a dictionary and use the
field name as a key:

document.write( addr['HsNum'] + " " + addr['Street'] + " " + addr['Town']);

I can't really think of any good reason to use this form other than if you were to be given the field
name as a string, perhaps after reading a file or input from the user of your program (we'll see how to
do that later too).

User Defined Operators

User defined types can, in some languages, have operations defined too. This is the basis of what is
known as object oriented programming. We dedicate a whole section to this topic later but essentially
an object is a collection of data elements and the operations associated with that data, wrapped up as
a single unit. Python uses objects extensively in its standard library of modules and also allows us as
programmers to create our own object types.

Object operations are accessed in the same way as data members of a user defined type, via the dot
operator, but otherwise look like functions. These special functions are called methods. We have
already seen this with the append() operation of a list. Recall that to use it we must tag the function
call onto the variable name:

>>> listObject = [] # an empty list

>>> listObject.append(42) # a method call of the list object
>>> print( listObject )
[42]

When an object type, known as a class, is provided in a Python module we must import the module
(as we did with sys earlier), then prefix the object type with the module name when creating an
instance that we can store in a variable (while still using the parentheses, of course). We can then use
the variable without using the module name.

We will illustrate this by considering a fictitious module meat which provides a Spam class. We
import the module, create an instance of Spam, assigning it the name mySpam and then use mySpam to
access its operations and data like so:

>>> import meat

>>> mySpam = meat.Spam() # create an instance, use module name
>>> mySpam.slice() # use a Spam operation
>>> print( mySpam.ingredients ) # access Spam data
{"Pork":"40%", "Ham":"45%", "Fat":"15%"}

In the first line we import the (non-existent!) module meat into the program. In the second line we
use the meat module to create an instance of the Spam class - by calling it as if it were a function! In
the third line we access one of the Spam class's operations, slice(), treating the object (mySpam) as
if it were a module and the operation were in the module. Finally we access some data from within the
mySpam object using the same module like syntax. We will be looking at real examples of this (i.e.
ones that work!) later in the course.

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Other than the need to create an instance, there’s no real difference between using objects provided
within modules and functions found within modules. Think of the object name simply as a label which
keeps related functions and variables grouped together.

Another way to look at it is that objects represent real world things, to which we as programmers can
do things. That view is where the original idea of objects in programs came from: writing computer
simulations of real world situations.

Both VBScript and JavaScript work with objects and in fact that's exactly what we have been using in
each of the Address examples above. We have defined a class and then created an instance which we
assigned to a variable so that we could access the instance's properties. Go back and review the
previous sections in terms of what we've just said about classes and objects. Think about how classes
provide a mechanism for creating new types of data in our programs by binding together the data and
operations of the new type.

Python Specific Operators

In this tutor my primary objective is to teach you to program and, although I use Python in the tutor,
there is no reason why, having read this, you couldn’t go out and read about another language and use
that instead. Indeed that’s exactly what I expect you to do since no single programming language,
even Python, can do everything. However, because of that objective, I do not teach all of the features
of Python but focus on those which can generally be found in other languages too. As a result there
are several Python specific features which, while they are quite powerful, I don’t describe at all, and
that includes special operators. Most programming languages have operations which they support and
other languages do not. It is often these 'unique' operators that bring new programming languages into
being, and certainly are important factors in determining how popular the language becomes.

For example Python supports such relatively uncommon operations as list slicing ( spam[X:Y] ) for
extracting a section (or slice) out from the middle of a list(or string, or tuple) and tuple assignment (
X, Y = 12, 34 ) which allows us to assign multiple variable values at one time.

It also has the facility to perform an operation on every member of a collection using its
map() function which we describe in the Functional Programming topic. There are many more and
it’s often said that "Python comes with the batteries included". For details of how most of these
Python specific operations work you’ll need to consult the Python documentation.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that although I say they are Python specific, that is not to say that they
can’t be found in any other languages but rather that they will not all be found in every language. The
operators that we cover in the main text are generally available in some form in virtually all modern
programming languages.

That concludes our look at the raw materials of programming, let’s move onto the more exciting topic
of technique and see how we can put these materials to work.

More information on the Address example

Although, as I said earlier, the details of this example are explained later, some readers have found
difficulty getting the Python example to work. This note gives a line by line explanation of the
Python code. The complete code for the example looks like this:

>>> class Address:

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... def __init__(self, Hs, St, Town, Zip):

... self.HsNumber = Hs
... self.Street = St
... self.Town = Town
... self.Zip_Code = Zip
...
>>> Addr = Address(7,"High St","Anytown","123 456")
>>> print( Addr.HsNumber, Addr.Street )

Here is the explanation:

>>> class Address:

The class statement tells Python that we are about to define a new type called, in this case,
Address. The colon indicates that any indented lines following will be part of the class definition.
The definition will end at the next unindented line. If you are using IDLE you should find that the
editor has indented the next line for you, if working at a command line Python prompt in an MS
DOS window then you will need to manually indent the lines as shown. Python doesn't care how
much you indent by, just so long as it is consistent.

... def __init__(self, Hs, St, Town, Zip):

The first item within our class is what is known as a method definition. One very important detail is
that the name has a double underscore at each end, this is a Python convention for names that it
treats as having special significance. This particular method is called __init__ and is a special
operation, performed by Python, when we create an instance of our new class, we'll see that shortly.
The colon, as before, simply tells Python that the next set of indented lines will be the actual
definition of the method.

... self.HsNumber = Hs

This line plus the next three, all assign values to the internal fields of our object. They are indented
from the def statement to tell Python that they constitute the actual definition of the
__init__ operation.The blank line tells the Python interpreter that the class definition is finished so
that we get the >>> prompt back.

>>> Addr = Address(7,"High St","Anytown","123 456")

This creates a new instance of our Address type and Python uses the __init__ operation defined
above to assign the values we provide to the internal fields. The instance is assigned to the
Addr variable just like an instance of any other data type would be.

>>> print( Addr.HsNumber, Addr.Street )

Now we print out the values of two of the internal fields using the dot operator to access them.

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As I said we cover all of this in more detail later in the tutorial. The key point to take away is that
Python allows us to create our own data types and use them pretty much like the built in ones.

Points to remember
Variables refer to data and may need to be declared before being defined.
Data comes in many types and the operations you can successfully perform will depend on
the type of data you are using.
Simple data types include character strings, numbers, Boolean or 'truth' values.
Complex data types include collections, files, dates and user defined data types.
There are many operators in every programming language and part of learning a new
language is becoming familiar with both its data types and the operators available for those
types.
The same operator (e.g. addition) may be available for different types, but the results may
not be identical, or even apparently related!

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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More Sequences and Other Things

What will we cover?
We introduce a new tool for entering Python programs.
We review the use of variables to store information until we need it.
We discuss comments and why they are needed
We combine longer sequences of commands to perform a task.

OK, Now we know how to type simple, single entry, commands into Python and have started to
consider data and what we can do with it. In doing so we typed in a few longer sequences of 5-10
lines. We are getting close to being able to write really quite useful programs but with one big snag:
every time we exit Python we lose our programs. If you have been doing the VBScript or JavaScript
examples you will see that you have stored those examples in files and so can run them repeatedly, we
need to do the same with Python. I already mentioned that we can do this using any text editor, like
notepad or pico, say, and saving the file with a .py file extension. You can then run the file from the
operating system command prompt by prefixing the script name with python. Here is an example
that uses a sequence of python commands; all things we've seen already:

# File: firstprogram.py
print( "hello world" )
print( "Here are the ten numbers from 0 to 9\n0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9" )
print( "I'm done!" )
# end of file

Note that the lines at top and bottom are not really needed, they are called comments and we will
discuss them later in this topic. I added them to show more clearly what goes into the file. You can
use Notepad or any other text editor to create the file so long as it saves in plain text.

Now to run this program start up an operating system command prompt. (If you aren't sure about
how to do that then see the box in the Getting Started topic.) Change into the directory where you
saved your python file and execute it by prefixing its name with python, like this:

D:\PROJECTS\Python> python firstprogram.py

hello world
Here are the ten numbers from 0 to 9
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
I'm done!

D:\PROJECTS\Python>

You can see the Windows command prompt and the command I typed (in bold), plus the output of
the program displayed before the command prompt reappears.

However, there is an easier way...

The joy of being IDLE

When you installed Python you also installed a useful application, itself written in Python, called
IDLE. IDLE is what is known as an Integrated Development Environment, that is to say it includes
several tools that help the programmer, all wrapped up in a single application. I won't be looking at
IDLE in depth here, but the two features that I want to highlight are the fact that it provides an
enhanced version of the Python >>> prompt, complete with syntax highlighting (That is, displaying

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different features of the language in different colours) and other nice features, plus a nice, Python
specific, text editor which allows you to run your program files (such as the one we created above)
directly from within IDLE.

I strongly recommend that, if you haven't already done so, you give IDLE a try. The best place to
start, once you find the right way to start IDLE on your Operating System, is to visit Danny Yoo's
excellent tutorial.

There is also a full tutorial on using IDLE on the Python web site under the IDLE topic.

Finally, if you prefer a simple approach, you can find several text editors that support programming in
Python in various ways. The vim editor provides syntax highlighting (colouring of key words etc),
emacs has a full editing mode for Python and Scite is a very lightweight editor that provides Python
syntax highlighting and other nice features.

If you go down the text editor route you will likely find it most convenient to have three windows
open on your screen at once:

1. The editor where you type in and save your source code
2. A Python session where you try things out at the >>> prompt before adding them to your
program in the editor and
3. An operating system command prompt used to run the program to test it.

I personally prefer the 3 window approach, but most beginners seem to prefer the all-in-one style of
an IDE like IDLE. The choice is entirely up to you.

If you are using JavaScript or VBScript I recommend using one of the editors mentioned above and a
suitable web browser, say Internet Explorer, opened at the file you are working on. To test changes
just hit the Reload button in the browser.

A quick comment
One of the most important of programming tools is one that beginners often feel is useless on first
acquaintance - comments. Comments are just lines in the program which describe what's going on.
They have no effect whatsoever on how the program operates, they are purely decorative. They do,
however, have an important role to play - they tell the programmer what's going on and more
importantly why. This is especially important if the programmer reading the code isn't the one who
wrote it, or, it's a long time since he/she wrote it. Once you've been programming for a while you'll
really appreciate good comments. I have actually been adding comments to some of the code
fragments that you've seen already, they were the green bits of the lines with a # (Python) or
' (VBScript) symbol in front of them. From now on I'll be commenting the code fragments that I
write. Gradually the amount of explanatory text will diminish as the explanation appears in comments
instead.

Every language has a way of indicating comments. In VBScript it's REM (for Remark) or, more
commonly, a single quote ' at the beginning of a comment. Everything after the marker is ignored:

REM This never gets displayed

' neither does this
msgBox "This gets displayed"

You might recognize REM if you have ever written any MSDOS batch files, since they use the same
comment marker.

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Note that the use of a single quote as a comment marker is the reason you can't start a string with a
single quote in VBScript - VBScript thinks it's a comment!

Python uses a # symbol as its comment marker. Anything following a # is ignored:

v = 12 # give v the value 12

x = v*v # x is v squared

Incidentally this is very bad commenting style. Your comment should not merely state what the code
does - we can see that for ourselves! It should explain why it's doing it:

v = 3600 # 3600 is num of secs in an hour

s = t*3600 # t holds elapsed time in hours, so convert to secs

These are much more helpful comments.

Finally JavaScript uses a double slash: // as a comment marker. Once again, everything after the
marker gets ignored.

Some languages allow multi-line comments between a pair of markers, but this can lead to some
obscure faults if the terminating marker is not correctly input. JavaScript allows multi-line comments
by using the pair of markers: /* followed by */, like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
document.write("This gets printed\n");

// A single line comment

/* Here is a multi line comment. It continues from this line

down into this line and even
onto this third line. It does not appear in the script output.
It is terminated by a mirror image of the opening marker */

document.write("And this prints too");

</script>

The important point about comments is that they are there to explain the code to anyone who tries to
read it. With that in mind you should explain any mysterious sections - such as apparently arbitrary
values used, or complex arithmetic formulae etc. And remember, the puzzled reader might be yourself
in a few weeks or months time!

Sequences using variables

We introduced the concept of variables in the Raw Materials topic topic. There we said they were
labels with which we marked our data for future reference. We saw some examples of using variables
too in the various list and address book examples. However variables are so fundamentally important
in programming that I want to do a quick recap of how we use variables before moving onto new
things.

Now, at a Python Prompt(>>>), either in IDLE's Shell or in a DOS or Unix command window, try
typing this:

>>> v = 7

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>>> w = 18
>>> x = v + w # use our variables in a calculation
>>> print( x )

What's happening here is that we are creating variables ( v, w, x ) and manipulating them. It's
rather like using the M button on your pocket calculator to store a result for later use.

We can make this prettier by using a format string to print the result:

>>> print( "The sum of %d and %d is: %d" % (v,w,x) )

One advantage of format strings is that we can store them in variables too:

>>> s = "The sum of %d and %d is: %d"

>>> print( s % (v,w,x) ) # useful if printing same output with different values

This makes the print statement much shorter, especially when it contains many values. However it
also makes it more cryptic so you have to use your judgment to decide whether very long lines are
more or less readable than a stored format value. If you keep the format string beside the print
statement, as we did here, then it's not too bad. Finally one other thing that helps is to name your
variables in such a way that they explain what they are used for. For example instead of calling the
format string s I could have called it sumFormat, so that the code looked like this:

>>> sumFormat = "The sum of %d and %d is: %d"

>>> print( sumFormat % (v,w,x) ) # useful if printing same output with different v

Now, in a program with several different format strings in use, we could more easily tell which format
is being printed. Meaningful variable names are always a good idea and I'll try to use meaningful
names where possible. Up until now our variables haven't had much meaning to convey!

Order matters
By now you might be thinking that this sequence construct is a bit over-rated and obvious. You
would be right in so far as it's fairly obvious, but it's not quite as simple as it might seem. There can be
hidden traps. Consider the case where you want to 'promote' all the headings in an HTML document
up a level:

Now in HTML the headings are indicated by surrounding the text with
<H1>text </H1> for level 1 headings,
<H2>text </H2> for level 2 headings,
<H3>text </H3> for level 3 headings and so on.

The problem is that by the time you get to level 5 headings the heading text is often smaller than the
body text, which looks odd. Thus you might decide to promote all headings up one level. It's fairly
easy to do that with a simple string substitution in a text editor, substitute '<H2' with '<H1' and '</H2'
with '</H1' and so on.

Consider though what happens if you start with the highest numbers - say H4 -> H3, then do H3 ->
H2 and finally H2 -> H1. All of the headings will have moved to H1! Thus the order of the sequence
of actions is important. The same is just as true if we wrote a program to do the substitution (which
we might well want to do, since promoting headings may be a task we do regularly).

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We've seen several other examples using variables and sequences in the Raw Materials topic -
particularly the various address book examples. Why not think up a few examples for yourself? Once
you've done that we'll move on to a case study that we will build upon as we move through the
tutorial, improving it with each new technique we learn.

A Multiplication Table
I'm now going to introduce a programming exercise that we will develop over the next few chapters.
The solutions will gradually improve as we learn new techniques.

Recall that we can type long strings by enclosing them in triple quotes? Let's use that to construct a
multiplication table:

>>> s = """
1 x 12 = %d
2 x 12 = %d
3 x 12 = %d
4 x 12 = %d
""" # be careful - you can't put comments inside
>>> # strings, they'll become part of the string!
>>> print( s % (12, 2*12, 3*12, 4*12) )

By extending that we could print out the full 12 times table from 1 to 12. But is there a better way?
The answer is yes, let's see what it is.

Points to remember
IDLE is a cross platform development tool for writing Python programs.
Comments can make programs clearer to read but have no effect on the operation of the
program
Variables can store intermediate results for later use

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Looping - Or the art of repeating oneself!

What will we cover?
How to use loops to cut down on repetitive typing.
Different types of loop and when to use them.

In the last exercise we printed out part of the 12 times table. But it took a lot of typing and if we
needed to extend it, it would be very time consuming. Fortunately there is a better way and it's where
we start to see the real power that programming languages offer us.

FOR Loops
What we are going to do is get the programming language to do the repetition, substituting a variable
which increases in value each time it repeats. In Python it looks like this:

>>>for n in range(1,13):
... print( "%d x 12 = %d" % (n, n*12) )
...
1 x 12 = 12
2 x 12 = 24
3 x 12 = 36
4 x 12 = 48
5 x 12 = 60
6 x 12 = 72
7 x 12 = 84
8 x 12 = 96
9 x 12 = 108
10 x 12 = 120
11 x 12 = 132
12 x 12 = 144

Note 1: The for line ends with a colon (:). This is important since it signifies to Python that what
follows is the thing to be repeated.

Note 2: We need the range(1,13) to specify 13 because range() function generates from the first
number up to, but not including, the second number. This may seem somewhat bizarre at first but
there are reasons and you get used to it.

Note 3: The for operator in Python is actually a foreach operator in that it applies the subsequent
code sequence to each member of a collection. In this case the collection is the list of numbers
generated by range(). You can prove that by typing print( list( range(1,13) ) at the
python prompt and seeing what gets printed. Alternatively we could just replace range() with an
explicit list of numbers like this:

>>> for n in [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]:

... print( "%d x 12 = %d" % (n, n*12) )
...

Note 4: The print line is indented or spaced further in than the for line above it. That is a very
important point since it's how Python knows that the print is the bit to repeat. There can be more
than a single line indented too, Python will repeat all of the lines that are indented for each item in the
collection. Also, it doesn't matter how much indentation you use so long as it's consistent.

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Note 5: In the interactive interpreter you need to hit return twice to get the program to run. The
reason is that the Python interpreter can't tell whether the first one is another line about to be added to
the loop code or not. When you hit Enter a second time Python assumes your finished entering code
and runs the program.

Phew! That was a lot of notes! However now we have considered the syntax of a for loop let's
consider how it works. Let's step through it step by step.

First of all, python uses the range() function to create a list of numbers from 1 to 12.

Next python makes n equal to the first value in the list, in this case 1. It then executes the bit of code
that is indented, using the value n = 1:

print( "%d x 12 = %d" % (1, 1*12) )

Python then goes back to the for line and sets n to the next value in the list, this time 2. It again
executes the indented code, this time with n = 2:

print( "%d x 12 = %d" % (2, 2*12) )

It keeps repeating this sequence until it has set n to all the values in the list. At that point it moves to
the next command that is not indented - in this case there aren't any more commands so the program
stops.

Here's the same loop in VBScript:

The simplest VBScript loop construct is called a For...Next loop, and is used as shown:

<script type="text/vbscript">
For N = 1 To 12
MsgBox N & " x 12 = " & N*12
Next
</script>

This is much more explicit and easier to see what is happening. The value of N varies from 1 through
to 12 and the code before the Next keyword is executed. In this case it just prints the result in a
dialog box as we've seen before. The indentation is optional but makes the code easier to read.

Although the VBScript appears, at first glance, more obvious, the Python version is ultimately more
flexible as we'll see shortly.

And in JavaScript

JavaScript uses a for construct that is common in many programming languages, being modeled on
C. It looks like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
for (n=1; n <= 12; n++){
document.write(n + " x 12 = " + n*12 + "<BR>");
};
</Script>

Note: This construct initially looks quite complicated. It has 3 parts inside the parentheses:

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an initializing part: n = 1 executed just once, before anything else,

a test part: n <= 12 which is executed before each iteration and
an increment part: n++ which is shorthand for "increment n by 1", and is executed after each
iteration.

Notice also that JavaScript encloses the repeated code (the loop body ) in braces {} and although that
is all that is needed, technically speaking, it is considered good practice to indent the code inside the
braces too, just to improve readability.

The loop body will only execute if the test part is true. Each of these parts can contain arbitrary code
but the test part must evaluate to a boolean value.

More about the Python for construct

The Python for loop iterates over a sequence. A Sequence in Python, lest you forgot, includes things
like strings, lists and tuples. (In fact Python can iterate over several other kinds of things too but we
will discuss them much later in the tutorial.) Thus we can write for loops that act on any type of
sequence. Let's try printing the letters of a word one by one using a for loop with a string:

>>> for c in 'word': print( c )

...
w
o
r
d

Notice how the letters were printed, one per line. Notice too that where the body of the loop consists
of a single line we can add it on the same line after the colon(:). The colon is what tells Python that
there's a block of code coming up next.

We can also iterate over a tuple:

>>> for word in ('one','word', 'after', 'another'): print (word)

...

This time we got each word on a line. We can put them all on one line using a special feature of the
print() function. We can add an extra argument after the printable item, like this:

>>> for word in ('one', 'word', 'after', 'another'): print( word, end='' )
...

See how the words now appear as a single line? The end='' part told Python to use an empty string
('' as the line ending instead of the newline character that it uses by default.

We have already seen for with a list but for completeness we will do it once more:

>>> for item in ['one', 2, 'three']: print( item )

...

There is one caveat when using foreach style loops like this. The loop gives you a copy of what was in
the collection, you can't modify the contents of the collection directly. So if you need to modify the
collection you have to use an awkward kludge involving the index of the collection, like this:

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myList = [1,2,3,4]
for index in range(len(myList)):
myList[index] += 1
print( myList )

That will increment each entry in myList. If we had not used the index trick we would simply have
incremented the copied items but not changed the original list.

Note that in this example I have not used the interactive Python prompt (>>>), so you need to type
this into a file as described in the More sequences topic. If you do try typing it at the >>> prompt you
will need to add extra blank lines to tell Python when you finish a block, for example after the myList
= line. It's actually quite a good way of learning where blocks start and stop: to type the code in and
see if you correctly guess where an extra line will be needed. It should be where the indentation
changes!

The other gotcha with for loops is that you can't delete items from the collection that you are iterating
over, otherwise the loop will get confused. It's a bit like the old cartoon character cutting off the
branch of a tree while sitting on it! The best way to deal with this situation is to use a different kind of
loop, which we are going to discuss next. However to understand how to remove elements safely we
need to wait until we cover yet another topic, that of branching, so we will explain this subject when
we get there.

It's worth noting that VBScript and JavaScript each have loop constructs for looping over the
elements in a collection. I won't discuss them in detail here, but the VBScript construct is for
each...in... and the JavaScript version is for...in... You can look them up in the relevant
help pages if you want to see the details.

WHILE Loops
FOR loops are not the only type of looping construct available. Which is just as well, since FOR loops
require us to know, or be able to calculate in advance, the number of iterations that we want to
perform. So what happens when we want to keep doing a specific task until something happens but
we don't know when that something will be? For example, we might want to read and process data
from a user until the user tells us to stop, so we won't know in advance how many data items the user
wants to have processed. We just want to keep on processing data until the user says enough. That's
possible but kind of tricky, in a FOR loop.

To solve this problem we have another type of loop: the WHILE loop.

It looks like this in Python:

>>> j = 1
>>> while j <= 12:
... print( "%d x 12 = %d" % (j, j*12) )
... j = j + 1

Let's walk through what's happening.

1. First we initialize j to 1, initializing the control variable of a while loop is a very important
first step, and a frequent cause of errors when missed out.
2. Next we execute the while statement itself, which evaluates a boolean expression
3. If the result is True it proceeds to execute the indented block which follows. In our example
j is less than 12 so we enter the block.

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4. We execute the print statement to output the first line of our table.
5. The next line of the block increments the control variable, j. In this case it's the last indented
line, signifying the end of the while block.
6. We go back up to the while statement and repeat steps 4-6 with our new value of j.
7. We keep on repeating this sequence of actions until j reaches 13.
8. At that point the while test will return False and we skip past the indented block to the next
line with the same indentation as the while statement.
9. In this case there are no other lines so the program stops.

By now that should feel pretty straightforward. Just one thing to point out - do you see the colon (:)
at the end of the while (and for) lines above? That just tells Python that there's a chunk of code (a
block) coming up. As we'll see in a moment, other languages have their own ways of telling the
interpreter to group lines together, Python uses a combination of the colon and indentation.

VBScript
Let's look at VBScript's version of the while loop:

<script type="text/vbscript">
DIM J
J = 1
While J <= 12
MsgBox J & " x 12 = " & J*12
J = J + 1
Wend
</script>

This produces the same result as before but notice that the loop block is delimited by the keyword
Wend (short for While End obviously!). Other than that it works pretty much exactly like the Python
one.

JavaScript

<script type="text/javascript">
j = 1;
while (j <= 12){
document.write(j," x 12 = ",j*12,"<BR>");
j = j++;
}
</script>

As you see the structure is pretty similar just some curly brackets or braces instead of the Wend in
VBScript. (Remember that j++ in JavaScript means increment the value of j) Note that unlike Python,
neither VBScript nor JavaScript need any indentation, that's purely to make the code more readable.

Finally it's worth comparing the JavaScript for and while loops. Recall that the for loop looked
like this:

for (j=1; j<=12; j++){....}

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Now, that is exactly the same structure as the while loop, just compressed into one line. The
initializer, the test condition and the loop modifier are all there clearly seen. So in fact a JavaScript
for loop is simply a while loop in a more compact form. It would be possible to do without the
for loop completely and only have while loops, and that's exactly what some other languages do.

More Flexible Loops

Coming back to our 12 times table at the beginning of this section. The loop we created is all very
well for printing out the 12 times table. But what about other values? Can you modify the loop to
make it do the 7 times table say? It should look like this:

>>> for j in range(1,13):

... print( "%d x 7 = %d" % (j,j*7) )

Now this means we have to change the 12 to a 7 twice. And if we want another value we have to
change it again. Wouldn't it be better if we could enter the multiplier that we want?

We can do that by replacing the values in the print string with another variable. Then set that variable
before we run the loop:

>>> multiplier = 12
>>> for j in range(1,13):
... print( "%d x %d = %d" % (j, multiplier, j*multiplier) )

That's our old friend the 12 times table. But now to change to the seven times, we only need to
change the value of 'multiplier'. Try typing this program into a Python script file and running it from a
command prompt. Then edit the multiplier value to try out some different tables.

Notice that we have here combined sequencing and loops. We have first a single command,
multiplier = 12 followed, in sequence by a for loop.

Looping the loop

Let's take the previous example one stage further. Suppose we want to print out all of the times tables
from 2 to 12 (1 is too trivial to bother with). All we really need to do is set the multiplier variable as
part of a loop, like this:

>>> for multiplier in range(2,13):

... for j in range(1,13):
... print( "%d x %d = %d" % (j,multiplier,j*multiplier) )

Notice that the part indented inside the first for loop is exactly the same loop that we started out
with. It works as follows:

1. We set multiplier to the first value (2) then go round the second, inner loop.
2. Then we set multiplier to the next value (3) and go round the inner loop again,
3. and so on.

This technique is known as nesting loops.

One snag is that all the tables merge together, we could fix that by just printing out a separator line at
the end of the first loop, like this:

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>>> for multiplier in range(2,13):

... for j in range(1,13):
... print "%d x %d = %d" % (j,multiplier,j*multiplier)
... print( "------------------- " )

Note that the second print statement lines up with the second 'for', it is the second statement in the
loop sequence. Remember, the indenting level is very important in Python.

Just for comparisons sake let's see how that looks in JavaScript too:

<script type="text/javascript">
for (multiplier=2; multiplier < 13; multiplier++){
for (j=1; j <= 12 ; j++){
document.write(j, " x ", multiplier, " = ", j*multiplier, "<BR>");
}
document.write("---------------<BR>");
}
</script>

Experiment with getting the separator to indicate which table it follows, in effect to provide a caption.
Hint: You probably want to use the multiplier variable and a Python format string.

Other loops
Some languages provide more looping constructs but some kind of for and while are usually there.
(Modula 2 and Oberon only provide while loops since while loops can simulate for loops - as we
saw above.) Other loops you might see are:

do-while
Same as a while but the test is at the end so the loop always executes at least once.
repeat-until
Similar to above but the logic of the test is reversed.
GOTO, JUMP, LOOP etc
Mainly seen in older languages, these usually set a marker in the code and then explicitly
jump directly to that marker.

Points to remember
FOR loops repeat a set of commands for a fixed number of iterations.
WHILE loops repeat a set of commands until some terminating condition is met. They may
never execute the body of the loop if the terminating condition is false to start with.
Other types of loops exist but FOR and WHILE are nearly always provided.
Python for loops are really foreach loops - they operate on a list of items.
Loops may be nested one inside another.
Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Coding Style
What will we cover?
Several new uses for comments
How to layout code using indentation to improve readability
An introduction to the use of modules for storing our programs

Comments
I've already spoken about comments in the 'More Sequences' section. However there are some other
things we can do with comments and I'll enlarge on those here:

Version history information

It is good practice to create a file header at the start of each file. This should provide details such as
the creation date, author, date of last change, version and a general description of the contents. Often
a log of changes. This block will appear as a comment:

#############################
# Module: Spam.py
# Author: A.J.Gauld
# Date: 1999/09/03
# Version: Draft 0.4
'''
This module provides a Spam class which can be
combined with any other type of Food object to create
interesting meal combinations.
'''
###############################
# Log:
# 1999/09/01 AJG - File created
# 1999/09/02 AJG - Fixed bug in pricing strategy
# 1999/09/02 AJG - Did it right this time!
# 1999/09/03 AJG - Added broiling method(cf Change Req #1234)
################################
import sys, string, food
...

Thus when you first open a file it should contain a nice summary of what the file is for, what's
changed over time and who did it and when. This is particularly important if you are working on a
team project and need to know who to ask about the design or the changes. There are version control
tools available that can help automate the production of some of this documentation, but they are
outside the scope of this tutorial.

Note that I put the description in between two sets of triple quotes. This is a Python specific trick
known as a documentation string that makes the description available to Python's built-in
help() function as we'll see shortly.

It is also worth noting that there are source code repository tools which can automatically maintain
things like the author, filename, and version log details. Once you start using a source code repository
(such as SCCS, CVS, Subversion or ClearCase) it is worth taking the time to investigate those
features as they can eliminate a lot of clerical administration of comments.

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Commenting out redundant code

This technique is often used to isolate a faulty section of code. For example, assume a program reads
some data, processes it, prints the output and then saves the results back to the data file. If the results
are not what we expect it would be useful to temporarily prevent the (erroneous)data being saved
back to the file and thus corrupting it. We could simply delete the relevant code but a less radical
approach is simply to convert the lines into comments like so:

data = readData(datafile)
for item in data:
results.append(calculateResult(item))
printResults(results)
######################
# Comment out till bug in calculateResult fixed
# for item in results:
# dataFile.save(item)
######################
print 'Program terminated'

Once the fault has been fixed we can simply delete the comment markers to make the code active
once more. Some editing tools, including IDLE, have menu options to comment out a selected block
of code, and to uncomment it later.

Note that many programmers editors, including IDLE, have a feature whereby you can select a
section of code and get the editor to comment it out automatically and then uncomment it when done.
This is is the Format->Comment Out Region menu item in IDLE.

Documentation strings

All languages allow you to create comments to document what a function or module does, but a few,
such as Python and Smalltalk, go one stage further and allow you to document the function in a way
that the language/environment can use to provide interactive help while programming. In Python this
is done using the """documentation""" string style:

class Spam:
"""A meat for combining with other foods

It can be used with other foods to make interesting meals.

It comes with lots of nutrients and can be cooked using many
different techniques"""

def __init__(self):
pass # ie. it does nothing!

help(Spam)

Note: We can access the documentation string by using the help() function. Modules, Functions
and classes/methods can all have documentation strings. For example try:

>>> import sys

>>> help (sys.exit)
Help on built-in function exit:

exit(...)
exit([status])

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Exit the interpreter by raising SystemExit(status).

If the status is omitted or None, it defaults to zero (i.e., success).
If the status is numeric, it will be used as the system exit status.
If it is another kind of object, it will be printed and the system
exit status will be one (i.e., failure).
(END)

To get out of help mode hit the letter 'q'(for quit) when you see the (END) marker. If more than one
page of help is present you can hit the space bar to page through it. If you are using IDLE, or other
IDE, then you likely won't see the (END) marker rather it will simply display all the text and you need
to use the scroll bars to go back and read it.

One final helper function is dir() which displays all the features that Python knows about for a
particular object. Thus if you want to know what functions or variables are contained in the sys
module, for example you could do this:

>>> import sys

>>> dir(sys)
[..... 'argv', 'builtin_module_names', 'byteorder', .... 'copyright',
.... 'exit', ..... 'stderr', 'stdin', 'stdout', 'subversion',
'version', 'version_info', 'warnoptions', 'winver']

You can then select likely candidates and use help() to get more details. (Note, I have missed out
many of the entries to save space!) This is particularly useful if you are using a module that does not
have good documentation (or even has no documentation!)

Block Indentation
This is one of the most hotly debated topics in programming. It almost seems that every programmer
has his/her own idea of the best way to indent code. As it turns out there have been some studies done
that show that at least some factors are genuinely important beyond cosmetics - ie they actually help
us understand the code better.

The reason for the debate is simple. In most programming languages the indentation is purely
cosmetic, an aid to the reader. (In Python it is, in fact, needed and is essential to proper working of
the program!) Thus:

< script type="text/vbscript">

For I = 1 TO 10
MsgBox I
Next
</script>

Is exactly the same as:

< script type="text/vbscript">

For I = 1 TO 10
MsgBox I
Next
</script>

so far as the VBScript interpreter is concerned. It's just easier for us to read with indentation.

The key point is that indentation should reflect the logical structure of the code thus visually it should
follow the flow of the program. To do that it helps if the blocks look like blocks thus:

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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

which reads better than:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXX

because it's clearly all one block. Studies have shown significant improvements in comprehension
when indenting reflects the logical block structure. In the small samples we've seen so far it may not
seem important but when you start writing programs with hundreds or thousands of lines it will
become much more so.

Variable Names
The variable names we have used so far have been fairly meaningless, mainly because they had no
meaning but simply illustrated techniques. In general it's much better if your variable names reflect
what you want them to represent. For example in our times table exercise we used 'multiplier' as the
variable to indicate which table we were printing. That is much more meaningful than simply 'm' -
which would have worked just as well and been less typing.

Its a trade-off between comprehensibility and effort. Generally the best choice is to go for short but
meaningful names. Too long a name becomes confusing and is difficult to get right consistently (for
example I could have used the_table_we_are_printing instead of multiplier but it's far too
long and not really much clearer.

Saving Your Programs

While the Python interactive interpreter prompt (>>>) is very useful for trying out ideas quickly, it
loses all you type the minute you exit. In the longer term we want to be able to write programs and
then run them over and over again. To do this in Python we create a text file with an extension .py
(this is a convention only, you could use anything you like. But it's a good idea to stick with
convention in my opinion...). You can then run your programs from an Operating System command
prompt by typing:

C:\WINDOWS> python spam.py

Where spam.py is the name of your Python program file and the C:\WINDOWS> is the operating
system prompt.

If you did follow convention you can also start your programs by double clicking them in Windows
Explorer since Windows knows to associate the .py extension with the Python interpreter.

The other advantage of using files to store the programs is that you can edit mistakes without having
to retype the whole fragment or, in IDLE, cursor all the way up past the errors to reselect the code.
IDLE supports having a file open for editing and running it from the Run->Run module menu item (or
the F5 keyboard shortcut).

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From now on I won't normally be showing the >>> prompt in examples, I'll assume you are
creating the programs in a separate file and running them either within IDLE or from a command
prompt (my personal favourite).

Note for Windows users

Under Windows you can set up a file association for files ending .py within Explorer. This will
allow you to run Python programs by simply double clicking the file's icon. This should already have
been done by the installer. You can check by finding some .py files and trying to run them. If they
start (even with a Python error message) it's set up. (The icon should be the Python logo.) The
problem you will likely run into at this point is that the files will run in a DOS box and then
immediately close, so fast you scarcely even see them! There are a couple of options:

The first way is simplest and involves putting the following line of code at the end of each
program:

input("Hit ENTER to quit")

Which simply displays the message and waits for the user to hit the ENTER or Return key.
We will discuss input() in the next topic.

The second technique uses the Windows Explorer settings. The procedure is fairly standard
but may vary according to the version of Windows you have. I will describe Windows XP
Home.
1. First select a .py file and go to the Tools->Folder Options menu item.
2. In the dialog box select the File Types tab.
3. Scroll down till you find the PY file type and click on it to select it.
4. Click the Advanced button at the bottom.
5. In the new dialog select open from the list and click Edit...
6. In the new dialog you should see the Application... line say something like:

C:\PYTHON3\python.exe "%1" %*

Edit it to add a -i after the python.exe and before the %1, like this:

C:\PYTHON3\python.exe -i "%1" %*
7. Now close all the dialogs.

This will stop Python from exiting at the end of your program and leave you at the >>>
prompt where you can inspect variable values etc, or just exit manually. (An alternative trick,
which I prefer, is, at step 5, to add a new option called Test alongside the existing Open. Set
the Test option to the command line above, complete with -i. This allows you to Right Click
in Explorer and choose Open to run the program and have it close automatically or choose
Test to run the program finishing in Python. The choice of behaviour is then yours.)

Note for Unix users

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The first line of a Python script file should contain the sequence #! followed by the full path of
python on your system. (This is sometimes known as the shebang line.) You can find that by typing,
at your shell prompt:
$ which python

On my system the line looks like:

#! /usr/local/bin/python

This will allow you to run the file without calling Python at the same time (after you set it to be
executable via chmod - but you knew that already I'm sure!):
$ spam.py

You can use an even more convenient trick on most modern Unix systems (including all Linux
distros) which replaces the path information with /usr/bin/env/python, like this:
#! /usr/bin/env/python

That will find where Python is in your path automatically. The only snag is where you may have two
or more different versions of Python installed and the script will only work with one of them (maybe
it uses a brand new language feature, say), in that case you will be better with the full path technique.

This #! line doesn't do any harm under Windows/Mac either, since it just looks like a comment, so
those users can put it in too, if their code is likely to ever be run on a unix box.

VBScript & JavaScript

You VBScript and JavaScript users can ignore the above, you've already been saving your programs
as files, it's the only way to get them to work!
Points to remember
Comments can be used to temporarily prevent code from executing, which is useful when
testing or 'debugging' code.
Comments can be used to provide an explanatory header with version history of type file.
Documentation strings can be used to provide run-time information about a module and the
objects within it.
Indentation of blocks of code helps the reader see clearly the logical structure of the code.
By typing a python program into a file instead of at the Python '>>>' prompt the program
can be saved and run on demand by typing $ python progname.py at the command
prompt or by double clicking the filename within an Explorer window on Windows.

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Conversing with the user

What will we cover?
How to prompt the user to enter data and how to read that data once it is entered.
We will show how to read both numerical and string based data.
The concepts of stdin and stdout
We look at command line interfaces and how to read data input as command line arguments.
We discuss the EasyGUI module for displaying simple data entry dialog boxes

So far our programs have only dealt with static data. Data that, if need be, we can examine before the
program runs and thus write the program to suit. Most programs aren't like that. Most programs
expect to be driven by a user, at least to the extent of being told what file to open, edit etc. Others
prompt the user for data at critical points. This aspect of programming is what is referred to as the
User Interface and in commercial programs designing and building the user interface is a job for
specialists trained in human machine interaction and ergonomics. The average programmer does not
have that luxury so must make do with some common sense, and careful thought about how users will
use the program. The most basic feature of a User Interface is displaying output and we have already
covered the most primitive way of doing that via the Python print function (and JavaScript's
write() function as well as the VBScript MsgBox dialog). The next step in User Interface design is
to take input directly from the user. The simplest way to do that is for the program to ask for the
input at run time, the next simplest way is for the user to pass the data in when he or she starts the
program, finally we have graphical user interfaces (GUIs) with text entry boxes etc. In this topic we
look mainly at the first two methods. We introduce GUI programming much later in the tutor because
it is significantly more complex, however there is a module which allows us to do very basic GUI style
dialog boxes for data entry in Python and we will briefly consider that.

Let's see how we can get data from a user in a normal Python interactive session running in IDLE or
an OS terminal. Afterwords we'll try doing the same in a program.

Python user input

We can get input from a user in Python like this:

>>>> print( input("Type something: ") )

As you see input() simply displays the given prompt - "Type something" in this case - and captures
whatever the user types in response. print() then displays that response. We could instead assign it
to a variable:

>>> resp = input("What's your name? ")

And now we can print out whatever value was captured:

>>> print( "Hi " + resp + ", nice to meet you" )

Notice that this time I have chosen not to use the string formatting operator to display the value
stored in the variable resp and have instead just inserted the value between two strings joining all
three strings together using the string addition operator. The value of resp is the one captured from
the user by input().

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Notice too in both examples the use of spaces inside the strings, both in the prompt given to
input() but also in the output string. In particular notice the third part of the output string started
with a comma followed by a space. It is a common mistake when producing output like that to get the
spacing wrong so check carefully when testing your programs.

This is great for reading strings. But what about other data types? The answer is that Python comes
with a full set of data conversion functions that can convert a string to another data type. Obviously
the data in the string has to be compatible with the type, otherwise you will get an error!

As an example lets take our multiplication table example and modify it to read the multiplier value
from the user:

>>> multiplier = input("Which multiplier do you want? Pick a number ")

>>> multiplier = int(multiplier)
>>> for j in range(1,13):
... print( "%d x %d = %d" % (j, multiplier, j * multiplier) )

Here we read the value from the user then convert it to an integer using the int() conversion
function. (You can use float() to convert to a floating point value too, should you need to). Here
we did the conversion on a separate line to make it clearer what we were doing, but in practice this is
so common that we usually just wrap the input() call inside the conversion, like this:

>>> multiplier = int( input("Which multiplier do you want? Pick a number ") )
>>> for j in range(1,13):
... print( "%d x %d = %d" % (j, multiplier, j * multiplier) )

You see? We just wrapped the input() call inside the call to int().

So what about using this in a real program? You recall the address book examples using a dictionary
that we created in the raw materials topic? Let's revisit that address book now that we can write loops
and read input data.

# create an empty address book dictionary

addressBook = {}

# read entries till an empty string

print() # print a blank line
name = "-" # non blank
while name != "":
name = input("Type the Name(leave blank to finish): ")
if name != "":
entry = input("Type the Street, Town, Phone.(Leave blank to finish): ")
addressBook[name] = entry

# now ask for one to display

name = "-"
while name != "":
name = input("Which name to display?(leave blank to finish): ")
if name != "":
print( name, addressBook[name] )

That's our biggest program so far, and although the user interface design is a bit clunky it does the
job. We will see how to improve it in a later topic. Some things to note in this program are the use of
the boolean test in the while loops to determine when the user wants us to stop. Also note that
whereas in the Raw Materials example we used a list to store the data as separate fields we have just

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stored it as a single string here. That's because we haven't yet covered how to break down a string
into separate fields. We'll cover that in a later topic too. In fact the address book program will be
cropping up from time to time through the rest of the tutorial as we gradually turn it into something
useful.

VBScript Input
In VBScript the InputBox statement reads input from the user thus:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim Input
Input = InputBox("Enter your name")
MsgBox ("You entered: " & Input)
</script>

The InputBox function simply presents a dialog with a prompt and an entry field. The contents of the
entry field are returned by the function. There are various values that you can pass to the function
such as a title string for the dialog box in addition to the prompt. If the user presses Cancel the
function returns an empty string regardless of what is actually in the entry field.

Here is the VBScript version of our Address book example.

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim dict,name,entry ' Create some variables.
Set dict = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
name = InputBox("Enter a name", "Address Book Entry")
While name <> ""
entry = InputBox("Enter Details - Street, Town, Phone number",
"Address Book Entry")
dict.Add name, entry ' Add key and details.
name = InputBox("Enter a name","Address Book Entry")
Wend

' Now read back the values

name = InputBox("Enter a name","Address Book Lookup")
While name <> ""
MsgBox(name & " - " & dict.Item(name))
name = InputBox("Enter a name","Address Book Lookup")
Wend
</script>

The basic structure is absolutely identical to the Python program although a few lines longer because
of VBScript's need to pre-declare the variables with Dim and because of the need for a
Wend statement to end each loop.

Reading input in JavaScript

JavaScript presents us with a challenge because it is a language primarily used within a web browser.
We have a choice of using a simple input box like VBScript using the prompt() function or instead
we can read from an HTML form element (or, in Internet Explorer, use Microsoft's Active Scripting
technology to generate an InputBox dialog like the one used by VBScript). For variety I'll show you
how to use the HTML form technique. If you are unfamiliar with HTML forms it might be worth
finding an HTML reference or tutorial to describe them, alternatively just copy what I do here and
hopefully it will be self explanatory. I will be keeping it very simple, I promise.

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The basic structure of our HTML example will be to put the JavaScript code in a function, although
we haven't covered these yet. For now just try to ignore the function definition bits.

<script type="text/javascript">
function myProgram(){
alert("We got a value of " + document.entry.data.value);
}
</script>

<form name='entry'>
<P>Type value then click outside the field with your mouse</P>
<Input Type='text' Name='data' onChange='myProgram()'>
</form>

The program just consists of a single line that displays an alert box (very similar to VBScript's
MsgBox) containing the value from the text field. The form displays a prompt message (within the
<P></P> pair) and an input field. The input field has an attribute, onChange, that tells JavaScript that
when the Input field changes it should execute the code given, in this case a call to myProgram. The
form has a name, entry within the document context, and the Input field has a name, data within
the entry form context. Thus within the JavaScript program we can refer to the value of the field as:

document.entry.data.value

I'm not going to show the address book example in JavaScript because the HTML aspects become
more complex and the use of functions increases and I want to wait till we have covered those in their
own topic.

A Simple Python GUI Tool

Creating a full blown GUI is quite a challenge and we need to cover a lot more material before being
able to tackle it. However there is a module called EasyGui which makes it possible to at least interact
with the user in a GUI like fashion via dialog boxes. EasyGui is not part of the standard Python library
of modules but must be downloaded separately from:

http://easygui.sourceforge.net/current_version/index.html

You will also find a full tutorial on that site showing all of the different options possible. We will look
at three of the simplest:

A Message box for displaying output,

An Input box for getting a string from the user
An Input box for getting a number from the user

The first thing to do is download the package and copy the python file into the site-packages folder
within the Lib folder of your Python installation. On my PC that is:

C:\Python3\Lib\site-packages

Then you can import the module as usual and access the various functions. Here is a simple
input/output sequence:

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import easygui
name = easygui.enterbox("What is your name?", "Name Dialog")
easygui.msgbox("Hello "+name+" nice to meet you!", "Greeting Dialog")

Notice the use of the module name to prefix the functions. Also notice that the second string we
passed into the function is displayed as the title of the dialog box.

I think you will agree that using EasyGui is nearly as easy to use as input()! Let's finally look at our
multiplication example with EasyGui:

import easygui

output = ""
multiplier = easygui.integerbox("Which mltiplier?", "Multiplier dialog")
for j in range(1,13):
output = output + "%d x %d = %d\n" % (j, multiplier, j * multiplier)

easygui.msgbox(output, "Multiplication table")

There are many other options in EasyGui that will make your programs look much more like a GUI
application. Experiment with the functions available and try to repeat some of our other examples,
such as the address book using EasyGUI.

Next we look at a different kind of user interaction that is used where the program just needs some
initial values and then generates it's output with no further intervention from the user.

A word about stdin and stdout

NOTE: stdin is a bit of computer jargon for the standard input device (usually the keyboard).
stdout refers to the standard output device (usually the screen). You will quite often see references
to the terms stdin and stdout in discussions about programming. (There is a third, less commonly
used term, stderr, which is where all console error messages are sent. Normally stderr appears in the
same place as stdout.) These terms are often called data streams since data appears as a stream of
bytes flowing to the devices. stdin and stdout are made to look like files (we'll get to those shortly)
for consistency with file handling code.

In Python they all live in the sys module and are called sys.stdin and sys.stdout.
input() uses stdin automatically and print() uses stdout. We can also read from stdin and write
to stdout directly and this can offer some advantages in terms of fine control of the input and
output. Here is an example of reading from stdin:

import sys
print( "Type a value: ", end='') # prevents newline
value = sys.stdin.readline() # use stdin explicitly
print( value )

It is almost identical to:

print( input("Type a value: ") )

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The advantage of the explicit version is that you can do fancy things like make stdin point to a real
file so the program reads its input from the file rather than the terminal - this can be useful for long
testing sessions whereby instead of sitting typing each input as requested we simply let the program
read its input from a file. (This has the added advantage of ensuring that we can run the test
repeatedly, sure that the input will be exactly the same each time, and so hopefully will the output.
This technique of repeating previous tests to ensure that nothing got broken is called regression
testing by programmers.)

Finally here is an example of direct output to sys.stdout that can likewise be redirected to a file.
print is nearly equivalent to:

sys.stdout.write("Hello world\n") # \n= newline

Of course we can usually achieve the same effects using format strings if we know what the data
looks like but if we don't know what the data will look like till runtime then its often easier to just
send it to stdout rather than try to build a complex format string at runtime.

Redirecting stdin & stdout

So how do we redirect stdin and stdout to files? We can do it directly within our program using the
normal Python file handling techniques which we will cover shortly, but the easiest way is to do it
via the operating system.

This is how the operating system commands work when we use redirection at the command prompt:

C:> dir
C:> dir > dir.txt

The first command prints a directory listing to the screen. The second prints it to a file. By using the
'>' sign we tell the program to redirect stdout to the file dir.txt.

We would do the same with a Python program like this:

$ python myprogram.py > result.txt

Which would run myprogram.py but instead of displaying the output on screen it would write it to
the file result.txt. We could see the output later using a text editor like notepad.

(Note that the $ prompt shown above is the standard for Linux users - just in case they were feeling
neglected!)

To get stdin to point at a file we simply use a < sign rather than a > sign. Here is a complete
example:

First create a file called echoinput.py containing the following code:

import sys

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inp = sys.stdin.readline()
while inp.strip() != '':
print( inp )
inp = sys.stdin.readline()

Note: The strip() simply chops off the newline character that is retained when reading from
stdin, input() does that for you as a convenience. You can now try running that from a command
prompt:

$ python echoinput.py

The result should be a program that echos back anything you type until you enter a blank line.

Now create a simple text file called input.txt containing some lines of text. Run the last program
again, redirecting input from input.txt:

$ python echoinput.py < input.txt

Python echos back what was in the file. But you might recall that we said that print() and
input() actually use stdin and stdout internally? That means we can replace the stdin stuff in
echoinput.py with input() like this:

inp = input()
while inp != '':
print( inp )
inp = input()

Which is much easier in most cases.

By using this technique with multiple different input files we can quickly and easily test our
programs for a variety of scenarios (for example bad data values or types) and do so in a repeatable
and reliable manner. We can also use this technique to handle large volumes of data from a file while
still having the option to input the data manually for small volumes using the same program.
Redirecting stdin and stdout is a very useful trick for the programmer, experiment and see what
other uses you can find for it.

There is a known bug in Windows XP that breaks input redirection. (If anyone knows whether this
has been fixed in Vista please let me know via the email link at the bottom of the page.) If you start
your program by just typing in the script name, rather than explicitly typing in python before it,
Windows will not display the results on the console! There is a registry hack to fix this on
Microsoft's web site, although even the hack isn't quite correct! You need to look under
HKEY_CURRENT USER instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE as recommended on the web page. My
recommendation is to always explicitly invoke python when dealing with redirected input or output!
(Thanks go to Tim Graber for spotting this and to Tim Peters for telling me about the registry hack
to fix it.)

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Command Line Parameters

One other type of input is from the command line. For example when you run your text editor from an
operating system command line, like:
$ EDIT Foo.txt

What happens is that the operating system calls the program called EDIT and passes it the name of
the file to edit, Foo.txt in this case. So how does the editor read the filename?

In most languages the system provides an array or list of strings containing the command line words.
Thus the first element will contain the command itself, the second element will be the first argument,
etc. There may also be some kind of magic variable (often called something like argc, for "argument
count") that holds the number of elements in the list.

In Python that list is held by the sys module and called argv (for 'argument values'). Python doesn't
need an argc type value since the usual len() method can be used to find the length of the list, and
in most cases we don't even need that since we just iterate over the list using Python's for loop, like
this:

import sys
for item in sys.argv:
print( item )

print( "The first argument was:", sys.argv[1] )

Note that this only works if you put it in a file (say args.py) and execute it from the operating system
prompt like this:

C:\PYTHON\PROJECTS> python args.py 1 23 fred

args.py
1
23
fred
The first argument was: 1
C:\PYTHON\PROJECTS>

VBScript and JavaScript

Being web page based the concept of command line arguments doesn't really arise. If we were using
them within Microsoft's Windows Script Host environment the situation would be different, and WSH
provides a mechanism to extract such arguments from a WshArguments object populated by WSH at
run time.

That's really as far as we'll go with user input in this course. It's very primitive but you can write
useful programs with it. In the early days of Unix or PCs it's the only kind of interaction you got. Of
course GUI programs read input too and we will look more closely at how that's done much later in
the tutorial.

Points to remember

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Use input() for reading strings.

input() can display a string to prompt the user.
EasyGui provides a GUI style mechanism equivalent to input() and print()
Command line arguments can be obtained from the argv list imported from the sys module
in Python, where the first item is the name of the program.

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Decisions, Decisions
What will we cover?
The 3rd programming construct - Branching
Single branches and multiple branches
Using Boolean expressions

The 3rd of our fundamental building blocks is branching or conditional statements. These are simply
terms to describe the ability of our programs to execute one of several possible sequences of code
(branches) depending on some condition.

Back in the early days of Assembler programming the simplest branch was a JUMP instruction where
the program literally jumped to a specified memory address, usually if the result of the previous
instruction was zero. Amazingly complex programs were written with virtually no other form of
condition possible - vindicating Dijkstra's statement about the minimum requirements for
programming. When high level languages came along a new version of the JUMP instruction appeared
called GOTO. In fact QBASIC, which is still supplied on the CD ROM with older versions of Windows
(pre XP), still provides GOTO and, if you have QBASIC installed, you can try it out by typing the
following bit of code:

10 PRINT "Starting at line 10"

20 J = 5
30 IF J < 10 GOTO 50
40 PRINT "This line is not printed"
50 STOP

Notice how even in such a short program it takes a few seconds to figure out what's going to happen.
There is no structure to the code, you have to literally figure it out as you read it. In large programs it
becomes impossible. For that reason most modern programming languages, including Python,
VBScript and JavaScript, either don't have a direct JUMP or GOTO statement or discourage you
from using it. So what do we use instead?

The if statement
The most intuitively obvious conditional statement is the if, then, else construct. It follows the
logic of English in that if some boolean condition (see below for more about this aspect of things) is
true then a block of statements is executed, otherwise (or else) a different block is executed.

Python

It looks like this in Python:

import sys # only to let us exit

print( "Starting here" )
j = 5
if j > 10:
print( "This is never printed" )
else:
sys.exit()

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Hopefully that is easier to read and understand than the previous GOTO example. Of course we can
put any test condition we like after the if, so long as it evaluates to True or False, i.e. a boolean
value. Try changing the > to a < and see what happens.

VBScript

VBScript looks quite similar:

<script type="text/vbscript">
MsgBox "Starting Here"
DIM J
J = 5
If J > 10 Then
MsgBox "This is never printed"
Else
MsgBox "End of Program"
End If
</script>

It's very nearly identical, isn't it? The main difference is the use of End If to indicate the end of the
construct.

And JavaScript too

And of course JavaScript has an if statement too:

<script type="text/javascript">
var j;
j = 5;
if (j > 10){
document.write("This is never printed");
}
else {
document.write("End of program");
}
</script>

Notice that JavaScript uses curly braces to define the blocks of code inside the if part and the
else part. Also the boolean test is contained in parentheses and there is no explicit keyword
then used. On a point of style, the curly braces can be located anywhere, I have chosen to line them
up as shown purely to emphasize the block structure. Also if there is only a single line within the
block (as we have here) the braces can be omitted entirely, they are only needed to group lines
together into a single block. However, many programmers like to always include the braces since they
avoid inconsistencies and avoid having to go back and add them if we add one extra line to a block.

Boolean Expressions
You might remember that in the Raw Materials section we mentioned a Boolean type of data. We
said it had only two values: True or False. We very rarely create a Boolean variable but we often
create temporary Boolean values using expressions. An expression is a combination of variables and
values combined by operators to produce a resultant value. In the following example:

if x < 5:
print( x )

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x < 5 is the expression and the result will be True if x is less than 5 and False if x is greater than or
equal to 5.

Expressions can be arbitrarily complex provided they evaluate to a single final value. In the case of a
branch that value must be either True or False. However, the definition of these two values varies
from language to language. In many languages False is the same as 0 or a non-existent value (often
called NULL, Nil or None). Thus an empty list or string evaluates to false in a Boolean context.
Python works this way and this means we can use a while loop to process a list until the list is
empty, using something like:

while aList:
# do something here

Or we can use an if statement to test whether a list is empty without resorting to the len() function
like this:

if aList:
# do something here

Finally we can combine Boolean expressions using Boolean operators which can often cut down the
number of if statements we need to write.

Consider this example:

if value > maximum:

print( "Value is out of range!" )
else if value < minimum:
print( "Value is out of range!" )

Notice that the block of code executed is identical. We can save some work, both for us and for the
computer, by combining both of the tests into a single test like this:

if (value < minimum) or (value > maximum):

print( "Value is out of range!" )

Notice we combined both tests using a boolean or operator. This is still a single expression because
Python evaluates the combined set of tests to a single result. You can think of it as evaluating the first
set of parentheses, then the second set of parentheses and finally combines the two calculated values
to form the final single value, either True or False. (In practice Python uses a slightly more efficient
technique known as short-circuit evaluation which we discuss in the Functional Programming topic)

Very often if we think carefully about the tests we need to carry out in our natural language then we
will find ourselves using conjunctions like 'and', 'or' and 'not'. If so there's a very good chance we can
write a single combined test rather than many separate ones.

Chaining if statements
You can go on to chain these if/then/else statements together by nesting them one inside the other.
Here is an example in Python:

# Assume price created previously...

price = int(input("What price? "))

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if price == 100:
print( "I'll take it!" )
else:
if price > 500:
print( "No way Jose!" )
else:
if price > 200:
print( "How about throwing in a free mouse mat?" )
else:
print( "price is an unexpected value!" )

Note 1:we used == (that's a double = sign) to test for equality in the first if statement, whereas we
use = to assign values to variables. Using = when you mean to use == is one of the more common
mistakes in programming Python, fortunately Python warns you that it's a syntax error, but you might
need to look closely to spot the problem.

Note 2:A subtle point to notice is that we perform the greater-than tests from the highest value down
to the lowest. If we did it the other way round the first test, which would be price > 200 would
always be true and we would never progress to the > 500 test. Similarly if using a sequence of
less-than tests you must start at the lowest value and work up. This is another very easy trap to fall
into.

VBScript & JavaScript

You can chain if statements in VBScript and JavaScript too but as it's pretty self evident I'll only
show a VBScript example here:

<script type="text/vbscript">
DIM Price
price = InputBox("What's the price?")
price = CInt(price)
If price = 100 Then
MsgBox "I'll take it!"
Else:
If price > 500 Then
MsgBox "No way Jose!"
Else:
If price > 200 Then
MsgBox "How about throwing in a free mouse mat too?"
Else:
MsgBox "price is an unexpected value!"
End If
End If
End If
</script>

The only things to note here are that there is an End If statement to match every If statement and
that we used the VBScript conversion function CInt to convert from the input string value to an
integer.

Case statements
One snag with chaining, or nesting if/else statements is that the indentation causes the code to
spread across the page very quickly. A sequence of nested if/else/if/else... is such a common
construction that many languages provide a special type of branch for it.

This is often referred to as a Case or Switch statement and the JavaScript version looks like:

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<script type="text/javascript">
function doArea(){
var shape, breadth, length, area;
shape = document.area.shape.value;
breadth = parseInt(document.area.breadth.value);
len = parseInt(document.area.len.value);
switch (shape){
case 'Square':
area = len * len;
alert("Area of " + shape + " = " + area);
break;
case 'Rectangle':
area = len * breadth;
alert("Area of " + shape + " = " + area);
break;
case 'Triangle':
area = len * breadth / 2;
alert("Area of " + shape + " = " + area);
break;
default: alert("No shape matching: " + shape)
};
}
</script>

<form name="area">
Length: <input type="text" name="len">
Breadth: <input type="text" name="breadth">
Shape: <select name="shape" size=1 onChange="doArea()">
<option value="Square">Square
<option value="Rectangle">Rectangle
<option value="Triangle">Triangle
</select>
</form>

The HTML form code just allows us to capture the details and then when the user selects a shape it
calls our JavaScript function. The first few lines simply create some local variables and convert the
strings to integers where needed. The bold section is the bit we are really interested in. It selects the
appropriate action based on the shape value, notice, by the way, that the parentheses around
shape are required. Each block of code within the case structure is not marked using curly braces, as
you might expect, but is instead terminated by a break statement. The entire set of case statements
for the switch is, however, bound together as a block by a single set of curly braces.

Finally note the final condition is default which is simply a catch-all for anything not caught in the
preceding Case statements.

Why not see if you can extend the example to cover circles as well? Remember to add a new option to
the HTML form as well as a new case to the switch.

VBScript Select Case

VBScript has a version too:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim shape, length, breadth, SQUARE, RECTANGLE, TRIANGLE
SQUARE = 0
RECTANGLE = 1
TRIANGLE = 2
shape = CInt(InputBox("Square(0),Rectangle(1) or Triangle(2)?"))

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length = CDbl(InputBox("Length?"))
breadth = CDbl(InputBox("Breadth?"))
Select Case shape
Case SQUARE
area = length * length
MsgBox "Area = " & area
Case RECTANGLE
area = length * breadth
MsgBox "Area = " & area
Case TRIANGLE
area = length * breadth / 2
MsgBox "Area = " & area
Case Else
MsgBox "Shape not recognized"
End Select
</script>

As with the JavaScript example the first few lines simply collect the data from the user and convert it
into the right type. The bold Select section shows the VBScript case construct with each successive
Case statement active as a block terminator for the previous one. The whole Select construct is
closed with the End Select statement. Finally there is a Case Else clause which, like the
default in JavaScript catches anything not caught in the Cases above.

One other feature worth pointing out is the use of Symbolic Constants instead of numbers. That is the
uppercase variables SQUARE, RECTANGLE and TRIANGLE are there simply to make the code easier
to read. The uppercase names are simply a convention to indicate that they are constant values rather
than conventional variables, but VBScript allows any variable name you like.

Python multi-selection

Python does not provide an explicit case construct but rather compromises by providing an easier
if/elseif/else format:

menu = """
Pick a shape(1-3):
1) Square
2) Rectangle
3) Triangle
"""
shape = int(input(menu))
if shape == 1:
length = float(input("Length: "))
print( "Area of square = ", length ** 2 )
elif shape == 2:
length = float(input("Length: "))
width = float(input("Width: "))
print( "Area of rectangle = ", length * width )
elif shape == 3:
length = float(input("Length: "))
width = float(input("Width: "))
print( "Area of triangle = ", length * width/2 )
else:
print( "Not a valid shape, try again" )

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Note the use of elif and the fact that the indentation (all important in Python) does not change
(unlike the nested if statement example). It's also worth pointing out that both this technique and the
earlier nested if/else example are equally valid, the elif technique is just a little easier to read if there
are many tests. The final condition is an else which catches anything not caught by the previous
tests, just like the default in JavaScript and Case Else in VBScript.

VBScript also provides a slightly more cumbersome version of this technique with
ElseIf...Then which is used in exactly the same way as the Python elif but is rarely seen since
Select Case is easier to use.

Putting it all together

So far many of our examples have been pretty abstract. To conclude let's take a look at an example
that uses nearly everything we've learned about so far to introduce a common programming
technique, namely displaying menus for controlling user input.

Here is the code, followed by a brief discussion:

menu = """
Pick a shape(1-3):
1) Square
2) Rectangle
3) Triangle

4) Quit
"""
shape = int(input(menu))
while shape != 4:
if shape == 1:
length = float(input("Length: "))
print( "Area of square = ", length ** 2 )
elif shape == 2:
length = float(input("Length: "))
width = float(input("Width: "))
print( "Area of rectangle = ", length * width )
elif shape == 3:
length = float(input("Length: "))
width = float(input("Width: "))
print( "Area of triangle = ", length * width / 2 )
else:
print( "Not a valid shape, try again" )
shape = int(input(menu))

We've added just three lines (in bold) to the previous Python example but in so doing have
significantly enhanced the usability of our program. By adding a 'Quit' option to the menu, plus a
while loop we have provided the capability for the user to keep on calculating sizes of different shapes
until she has all the information she needs. There is no need to rerun the program manually each time.
The only other line we added was to repeat the input(menu) shape selection so that the user gets
the chance to change the shape and, ultimately, to quit.

What the program does is create the illusion to the user that the program knows what they want to do
and does it correctly, acting differently depending on what they input. In essence the user appears to
be in control, whereas in fact, the programmer is in control since he has anticipated all the valid inputs
and how the program will react. The intelligence on display is that of the programmer, not the
machine - computers after all are stupid!

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You see how easily we can extend our program just by adding a few lines and combining sequences
(the blocks that calculate the area), loops (the while loop) and conditionals (the if/elif structure).
Dijkstra's three building blocks of programming. Having covered all three you can, in theory, now go
out and program anything, but there are a few more techniques we can learn to make things a bit
easier, so don't rush off just yet.

Conditional Expressions
One form of branching that is very common is where we want to assign a different value to a variable
depending on some condition. This is very easily done using a standard if/else condition, like so:

if someCondition:
value = 'foo'
else:
value = 'bar'

However this is so common that some languages provide a shortcut that is called a conditional
expression structure. In Python this looks like:

value = 'foo' if someCondition else 'bar'

This is identical to the longer form above. VBScript doesn't have such a structure but JavaScript does
provide something similar using a slightly cryptic syntax:

<script type="text/javascript">
var someCondition = true;
var s;

s = (someCondition ? "foo" : "bar");

document.write(s);
</script>

Notice the strange syntax in the parentheses? Basically it does the same as the Python version but just
uses a more concise set of symbols. Basically it says if the expression before the question mark is true
then return the value following the question mark, otherwise return the value after the colon. Notice
also that I used parentheses in this example. These aren't required but they often make it more obvious
what is going on and I recommend them when using conditional expressions, even in Python.

These kinds of stylistic shortcuts can be convenient but many programmers find them a but clumsy
and prefer not to use them. My personal advice is to use them where it makes sense, usually in simple
cases, but avoid them if it starts to make the code look overly complex.

Modifying collections from inside loops

We mentioned in the looping topic that modifying a collection from inside a loop was a difficult thing
to do, but never got round to explaining how to do it! The reason is, we had to wait for branching to
be explained first. So here is the solution:

If we need to modify the elements of a collection in place we can use a while loop to make the
changes as we iterate over it. We can do this because in a while construct we have explicit control
over the index, unlike the situation in a for loop where the index is automatically updated. Let's see
how to delete all zeros from a list:

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myList = [1,2,3,0,4,5,0]
index = 0
while index < len(myList):
if myList[index] == 0:
del(myList[index])
else:
index += 1
print( myList )

The thing to note here is that we do not increment the index if we remove an item, we rely on the
deletion moving everything up so that the old index value now points at the next item in the
collection. We use an if/else branch to control when we increment the index. It's very easy to make
a mistake doing this kind of thing so test your code carefully. There is another set of Python functions
which are specifically designed for manipulating list contents and we look at them in the Functional
Programming topic in the advanced section of the tutorial.
Things to Remember
Use if/else to branch
The else is optional
Multiple decisions can be represented using a Case or if/elif construct
Boolean expressions return True or False
Combining menus with Case constructs allows us to build a wide range of user controlled
applications.

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Programming with Modules

What will we cover?
What modules are about
Functions as modules
Using module files
Writing our own functions and modules
An introduction to Windows Script Host

What's a Module?
The 4th element of programming involves the use of modules. In fact it's not strictly necessary, and
using what we've covered so far you can actually write some pretty impressive programs. However,
as the programs get bigger it becomes harder and harder to keep track of what's happening and
where. We really need a way to abstract away some of the details so that we can think about the
problems we are trying to solve rather than the minutiae of how the computer works. To some extent
that's what Python, VBScript and JavaScript already do for us with their built in capabilities - they
prevent us from having to deal with the hardware of the computer, how to read the individual keys on
the keyboard etc.

The idea of programming with modules is to allow the programmer to extend the built in capabilities
of the language. It packages up bits of program into modules that we can 'plug in' to our programs.
The first form of module was the subroutine which was a block of code that you could jump to
(rather like the GOTO mentioned in the branching section) but when the block completed, it could
jump back to wherever it was called from. That particular style of modularity is known as a
procedure or function. In Python and some other languages the word module has taken on a more
specific meaning which we will look at shortly, but first let's consider functions a bit more closely.

Using Functions
Before considering how to create functions let's look at how we use the many, many, functions that
come with any programming language (the set of standard functions available for any given language
often called that language's standard library).

We've already seen some functions in use and listed others in the operators section of the Raw
Materials topic. Now we'll consider what these have in common and how we can use them in our
programs.

The basic structure of a function call is as follows:

aValue = someFunction ( anArgument, another, etc... )

That is, the variable aValue takes on the value obtained by calling a function called someFunction.
The function can accept, inside parentheses, zero or many arguments which it treats like internal
variables. Functions can call other functions internally. In most programming languages (although not
all), even if there are no arguments, we must still provide the parentheses when calling a function.

Let's consider some examples in our various languages to see how this works:

VBScript: Mid(aString, start, length)

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This returns the next length characters starting at the start in aString.

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim time
time = "MORNING EVENING AFTERNOON"
MsgBox "Good" & Mid(time, 8, 8)
</script>

This displays "Good EVENING". One feature to note about VBScript is that it does not require
parentheses to group the function's arguments, spaces are usually sufficient, as we have been doing
with MsgBox. However if we combine two functions (as we do here) then the inner one must use
parentheses, my advice is: if in doubt, use the parentheses.

VBScript: Date

This returns the current system date.

<script type="text/vbscript">
MsgBox Date
</script>

There's not much more I can say about that, except that there's a whole bunch of other date functions
for extracting the day, week, hour etc.

JavaScript: startString.replace(searchString, newString)

Returns a new string with the searchString replaced by newString, in startString

<script type="text/javascript">
var r,s = "A long and winding road";
document.write("Original = " + s + "<BR>");
r = s.replace("long", "short");
document.write("Result = " + r);
</script>

Note: almost everything in JavaScript is an example of a special type of function called a method. A
method is a function that is associated with an object (as discussed in the Raw Materials topic and in
much more detail later in the tutorial). The main thing to note here is that the function is "attached" to
the string s by the dot operator which means that s is the string that we will be performing the
substitution upon.

This is nothing new. We have been using the write() method of the document object to display the
output from our JavaScript programs (using document.write()) since the beginning of the tutorial,
I just haven't explained the reason behind the dual name format up until now.

Back in the Raw Materials topic we mentioned that JavaScript used a module called Math to do
exponentiation. We can see that now.

JavaScript: Math.pow(x,y)

The function in the Math module that we use is pow(x,y), which raises x to the power y:

<script type="text/javascript">

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document.write( Math.pow(2,3) );
</script>

Python: pow(x,y)

Python also has a pow() function which raises x to the power y.

>>> x = 2 # we'll use 2 as our base number

>>> for y in range(0,11):
... print( pow(x,y) ) # raise 2 to power y, i.e. 0-10

Here we generate values of y from 0 to 10 and call the built-in pow() function passing 2 arguments:
x and y. On each iteration of the loop the current values of x and y are substituted into the pow() call
and the result is printed.

Note: The Python exponentiation operator, ** is equivalent to the pow() function.

Python: dir(m)

Another useful function built in to python is dir which, when passed the name of a module displays
all of the exported names within the module - including all of the variables and functions that you can
use. Python comes with lots of modules, although we haven't really discussed them up till now. The
dir function gives back a list of valid names - often functions - in that module. Try it on the built-in
functions:

>>> print dir(__builtins__)

Note 1: builtins is one of Python's "magic" words so once again we need to surround it with
double underscores - that's two underscores at each end.

Note 2: To use dir() on any other module you need to import the module first otherwise Python
will complain that it doesn't recognize the name.

>>> import sys

>>> dir(sys)

You will recall that we met the sys module away back in our first sequences topic. In the output from
that last dir you should spot our old friend exit buried in the middle of all the other stuff in sys.

Before doing much else we'd better talk about Python modules in a bit more detail.

Using Modules
Python is an extremely extensible language in that you can add new capabilities by importing
modules. We'll see how to create modules shortly but for now we'll play with some of the standard
modules that ship with Python.

sys

We met sys already when we used it to exit from Python. It has a whole bunch of other useful
functions too, as we saw with the dir function above. To gain access to these we must import sys:

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import sys # make functions available

print( sys.path ) # show where Python looks for modules
sys.exit() # prefix with 'sys'

If we know that we will be using the functions a lot and that they won't have the same names as
functions we have already imported or created then we can do:

from sys import * # import all names in sys

print( path ) # can use without specifying prefix 'sys'
exit()

The big danger with this approach is that two modules could define functions with the same name and
then we could only use the second one that we import (because it will override the first). If we only
want to use a couple of items then it's safer to do it this way:

from sys import path, exit # import the ones we need

exit() # use without specifying prefix 'sys'

Note that the names we specify do not have the parentheses following them. If that was the case we
would attempt to execute the functions rather than import them. The name of the function is all that is
given.

Finally I'd like to show you a shorthand trick that saves some typing. If you have a module with a very
long name we can rename the module when we import it. Here is an example:

import SimpleXMLRPCServer as s
s.SimpleXMLRPCRequestHandler()

Notice that we told Python to consider s to be a shorthand for SimpleXMLRPCServer. Then to use
the functions of the module we only need to type s. which is much shorter!

Other Python modules and what they contain

You can import and use any of Python's modules in this way and that includes modules you create
yourself. We'll see how to do that in a moment. First though, I'll give you a quick tour of some of
Python's standard modules and some of what they offer:

Module name Description

sys Allows interaction with the Python system:
exit() - exit!
argv - access command line arguments
path - access the system module search path
ps1 - change the '>>>' Python prompt!
os Allows interaction with the operating system:
name - the current operating system, useful for portable programs
system - execute a system command
mkdir - create a directory
getcwd - find the current working directory

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re Allows manipulation of strings with Unix style

regular expressions
search - find pattern anywhere in string
match - find at beginning only
findall - find all occurences in a string
split - break into fields separated by pattern
sub,subn - string substitution
math Allows access to many mathematical functions:
sin,cos etc - trigonometrical functions
log,log10 - natural and decimal logarithms
ceil,floor - ceiling and floor
pi, e - natural constants
time time(and date) functions
time - get the current time (expressed in seconds)
gmtime - convert time in secs to UTC (GMT)
localtime - convert to local time instead
mktime - inverse of localtime
strftime - format a time string, e.g. YYYYMMDD or DDMMYYY
sleep - pause program for n seconds
random random number generators - useful for games programming!
randint - generate random integer between inclusive end points
sample - generate random sublist from a bigger list
seed - reset the number generator key

These are just the tip of the iceberg. There are literally dozens of modules provided with Python, and
as many again that you can download. (A couple of good sources are the Vaults of Parnassus and,
especially for more recent things, the Cheese shop.) SourceForge is also home to many Python
projects that have useful modules available. Google search is your friend, just include 'python' in the
search string. Don;t forget to read the documentation to find out how to do Internet programming,
graphics, build databases etc. (I touch on some of these topics in the Applicatons section of this
tutorial.)

The important thing to realize is that most programming languages have these basic functions either
built in or as part of their standard library. Always check the documentation before writing a function
- it may already be there! Which leads us nicely into...

Defining our own functions

OK, so we know how to use the existing functions and modules, but how do we create a new
function? Simply by defining it. That is we write a statement which tells the interpreter that we are
defining a block of code that it should execute, on demand, elsewhere in our program.

VBScript first

So let's create a function that can print out a multiplication table for us for any value that we provide
as an argument. In VBScript it looks like:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Sub Times(N)

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Dim I
For I = 1 To 12
MsgBox I & " x " & N & " = " & I * N
Next
End Sub
</script>

We start with the keyword Sub (for Subroutine) and end the definition with End Sub, following the
normal VBScript block marker style. We provide a list of parameters enclosed in parentheses. The
code inside the defined block is just normal VBScript code with the exception that it treats the
parameters as if they were local variables. So in the example above the function is called Times and it
takes a single parameter called N. It also defines a local variable I. It then executes a loop to display
the N times table, using both N and I as variables.

We can now call the new function like this:

<script type="text/vbscript">
MsgBox "Here is the 7 times table..."
Times 7
</script>

Note 1: We defined a parameter called N and passed an argument of 7 . The parameter (or local
variable) N inside the function took the value 7 when we called it. We can define as many parameters
as we want in the function definition and the calling programs must provide values for each
parameter. Some programming languages allow you to define default values for a parameter so that if
no value is provided the function assumes the default. We'll see this in Python later.

Note 2: We enclosed the parameter, N, in parentheses during function definition but, as is usual in
VBScript, we did not need to use parentheses when calling the function.

This function does not return a value and is really what is called a procedure, which is, quite simply, a
function that doesn't return a value! VBScript differentiates between functions and procedures by
having a different name for their definitions. Let's look at a true VBScript function that returns the
multiplication table as a single, long string:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Function TimesTable (N)
Dim I, S
S = N & " times table" & vbNewLine
For I = 1 to 12
S = S & I & " x " & N & " = " & I*N & vbNewLine
Next
TimesTable = S
End Function

Dim Multiplier
Multiplier = InputBox("Which table would you like?")
MsgBox TimesTable (Multiplier)
</script>

It's very nearly identical to the Sub syntax, except we use the word Function instead of Sub.
However, notice that you must assign the result to the function name inside the definition. The
function returns as a result whatever value the function name contains when it exits:

...

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TimesTable = S
End Function

If you don't assign an explicit value the function will return a default value, usually zero or an empty
string.

Notice also that we had to put parentheses around the argument in the MsgBox line. That's because
MsgBox wouldn't otherwise have been able to work out whether Multiplier was to be printed or
passed to its first argument which was TimesTable. By putting it in parentheses it is clear to the
interpreter that the value is an argument of TimesTable rather than of MsgBox.

Python too

In Python the Times function looks like:

def times(n):
for i in range(1,13):
print( "%d x %d = %d" % (i, n, i*n) )

And is called like:

print( "Here is the 9 times table..." )

times(9)

Note that in Python procedures are not distinguished from functions and the same name def is used
to define both. The only difference is that a function which returns a value uses a return statement,
like this:

def timesTable(n):
s = ""
for i in range(1,13):
s = s + "%d x %d = %d\n" % (i,n,n*i)
return s

As you see it's very simple, just return the result using a return statement. (If you don't have an
explicit return statement Python automatically returns a default value called None which we usually
just ignore.)

We can then simply print the result of the function like so:

print( timesTable(7) )

Although we haven't followed this advice throughout this tutorial, it is usually best to avoid putting
print statements inside functions. Instead, get them to return the result and print that from outside
the function. That makes your functions much more reusable, in a wider variety of situations.

A Note About Parameters

Sometimes beginners find it hard to understand the role of parameters in function definitions. That is,
whether they should define a function like this:

def f(x): # can use x within the function...

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or

x = 42
def f(): # can use x within the function...

The first example defines a parameter x and uses it inside the function, whereas the second directly
uses a variable defined outside the function. Since the second method (usually) works why bother
defining the parameter?

We have already said that the parameters act as local variables, that is, ones which are only usable
inside the function. And we've said that the user of the function can pass in arguments to those
parameters. So the parameter list acts like a gateway for data moving between the main program and
the inside of the function.

The function can see some data outside the function (see the What's in a Name? topic for more on
that). However if we want the function to have maximum re-usability across many programs we want
to minimise its dependence on external data. Ideally all the data that a function needs to work properly
should be passed into it via its parameters.

If the function is defined inside a module file it is permissible to read data defined in that same module,
but even that will reduce the flexibility of your function. Of course if a lot of data is involved it may
mean that you need a high number of parameters but we can reduce that to a manageable level by
using data collections: lists, tuples and dictionaries etc. Also, in Python and some other languages, we
can reduce the number of actual parameter values we need to provide by using something called
default arguments which we discuss in the next section.

Default Values

You might recall that I mentioned the use of default values earlier? This refers to a way of defining
function parameters that, if not passed as arguments explicitly, will take on a default value. One
sensible use for these would be in a function which returns the day of the week. If we call it with no
value we mean today, otherwise we provide a day number as an argument. Something like this:

import time

# a day value of None => today

def dayOfWeek(DayNum = None):
# match day order to Python's return values
days = ['Monday','Tuesday',
'Wednesday','Thursday',
'Friday', 'Saturday', 'Sunday']

# check for the default value

if DayNum == None:
theTime = time.localtime(time.time())
DayNum = theTime[6] # extract the day value
return days[DayNum]

Note: We only need to use the time module if the default parameter value is involved, therefore we
could defer the import operation until we need it. This would provide a slight performance
improvement if we never had to use the default value feature of the function, but it is so small, and
breaks the convention of importing at the top, that the gain isn't worth the extra confusion.

Now we can call this with:

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print( "Today is: %s" % dayOfWeek() )

# remember that in computer speak we start from 0
# and in this case we assume the first day is Monday.
print( "The third day is %s" % dayOfWeek(2) )

Counting Words

Another example of a function which returns a value might be one which counts the words in a string.
You could use that to calculate the words in a file by adding the totals for each line together.

The code for that might look something like this:

def numwords(s):
s = s.strip() # remove "excess" characters
list = s.split() # list with each element a word
return len(list) # number of elements in list is the number of words in s

That defines the function, making use of some of the built-in string methods which we mentioned in
passing in the Raw Materials chapter.

We would use it by doing something like this:

for line in file:

total = total + numwords(line) # accumulate totals for each line
print( "File had %d words" % total )

Now if you tried typing that in, you'll know that it didn't work. Sorry! What I've done is a common
design technique which is to sketch out how I think the code should look but not bothered to use the
absolutely correct code. This is sometimes known as Pseudo Code or in a slightly more formal style
Program Description Language (PDL).

One other thing that this illustrates is why it is better to return a value from a function and print the
result outside the function rather than to print the value inside the function. If our function had printed
the length rather than returning it we could not have used it to count the total words in the file, we
would simply have gotten a long list of the length of each line. By returning the value we can choose
to use the value that way or, as we did here, simply store it in a variable for further processing - in this
case taking the total count. It is a very important design point to separate the display of your data (via
print) from the processing of the data (in the function). A further advantage is that if we print the
output it will only be useful in a command line environment, but if we return the value we can display
it in a web page or a GUI too. Separating processing from presentation is very powerful, try to always
return values from functions rather than printing them. The exception to this rule is where you create
a function specifically to print out some data, in which case try to make this obvious by using the
word print or display in the function name.

Once we've had a closer look at file and string handling, a little later in the course, we'll come back to
this example and write it for real.

JavaScript Functions

We can also create functions in JavaScript, of course, and we do so using the function command,
like so:

<script type="text/javascript">

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var i, values;

function times(m) {
var results = new Array();
for (i = 1; i <= 12; i++) {
results[i] = i * m;
}
return results;
}

// Use the function

values = times(8);

for (i=1;i<=12;i++){
document.write(values[i] + "<BR>");
}
</script>

In this case the function doesn't help much, but hopefully you can see that the basic structure is very
similar to the Python and VBScript function definitions. We'll see more complex JavaScript functions
as we go through the tutor. In particular JavaScript uses functions to define objects as well as
functions, which sounds confusing, and indeed can be!

Before we move on though, now is a good time to look back at the JavaScript example in Talking to
the User, where we used JavaScript to read input from a web form. The code looked like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
function myProgram(){
alert("We got a value of " + document.entry.data.value);
}
</script>

<form name='entry'>
<P>Type value then click outside the field with your mouse</P>
<Input Type='text' Name='data' onChange='myProgram()'>
</form>

Looking at that we can now see that what we did was define a JavaScript function called
myProgram and then tell the form to call that function when the Input field changed. We'll explain
this further in the topic on Event Driven programming

A Word of Caution

Functions are very powerful because they allow us to extend the language, they also give us the
power to change the language by defining a new meaning for an existing function (some languages
don't allow you to do this), but this is usually a bad idea unless carefully controlled (we'll see a way to
control it in a minute). By changing the behavior of a standard language function your code can
become very difficult for other people (or even you, later on) to read, since they expect the function
to do one thing but you have redefined it to do another. Thus it is good practice not to change the
basic behavior of built in functions.

One way to get round this limitation of not changing built in behavior but still using a meaningful
name for our functions is to put the functions inside either an object or a module which provides its
own local context. We'll look at the object approach in the OOP topic a little later but for now let's
see how we go about creating our own modules.

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Creating our own modules

So far we have seen how to create our own functions and call these from other parts of our program.
That's good because it can save us a lot of typing and, more importantly, makes our programs easier
to understand because we can forget about some of the details after we create the function that hides
them. (This principle of wrapping up the complex bits of a program inside functions is called
information hiding for fairly obvious reasons.) But how can we use these functions in other
programs? The answer is that we create a module.

Python Modules

A module in Python is nothing special. It's just a plain text file full of Python program statements.
Usually these statements are function definitions. Thus when we type:

import sys

we tell the Python interpreter to read that module, executing the code contained in it and making the
names that it generated available to us in our file. It is almost like making a copy the contents of
sys.py into our program, like a cut n' paste operation. (it's not really like that but the concept is
similar. In fact sys is a special kind of module that doesn't actually have a sys.py file, but we will
ignore that for now!). In fact in some programming languages (noteably C and C++) the translator
literally does sometimes copy module files into the current program as required.

So to recap, we create a module by creating a Python file containing the functions we want to reuse in
other programs. Then we just import our module exactly like we do the standard modules. Easy eh?
Let's do it.

Copy the function below into a file by itself and save the file with the name timestab.py. You can
do this using IDLE or Notepad or any other editor that saves plain text files. Do not use a Word
Processing program since they tend to insert all sorts of fancy formatting codes that Python will not
understand.

def print_table(multiplier):
print( "--- Printing the %d times table ---" % multiplier )
for n in range(1,13):
print( "%d x %d = %d" % (n, multiplier, n*multiplier) )

Now at the Python prompt type:

>>> import timestab

>>> timestab.print_table(12)

Heh presto! You've created a module, imported it and used the function defined inside it.

Important Note:If you didn't start Python from the same directory that you stored the
timestab.py file then Python might not have been able to find the file and reported an error. If so
then you can create an environment variable called PYTHONPATH that holds a list of valid
directories to search for modules (in addition to the standard modules supplied with Python). I find it
convenient to define a folder in my PYTHONPATH and store all my reusable module files in that
folders. Obviously you should test your modules thoroughly before moving them into that folder.

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Creating environment variables is a platform specific operation which I assume you either know how
to do or can find out! For example Windows XP users can use the Start->Help & Support facility to
search for Environment Variables and see how to create them.

Modules in VBScript and JavaScript

What about VBScript? That's more complex.... In VBScript itself and other older varieties there is no
real module concept. Instead, VBScript relies on the creation of objects to reuse code between
projects. We look at this later in the tutorial. Meantime you will have to manually cut n' paste from
previous projects into your current one using your text editor.

Note: VBScript's big brother Visual Basic does have a module concept and you can load a module
via the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) File|Open Module... menu. There are a
few restrictions as to what kind of things you can do inside a VB module but since we're not using
Visual Basic on this course I won't go into that any further. Microsoft make a free version of the
latest VB Express version available although you have to register with them before you can use it. If
you feel like experimenting this page has more details.

Like VBScript, JavaScript does not offer any direct mechanism for reuse of code files as modules.
However there are some exceptions to these in specialised environments such as where JavaScript is
used outside of a web page (See the Windows Script Host box below for an example).

Windows Script Host

So far we have looked at VBScript and JavaScript as languages for programming within a web
browser. That imposes some restrictions including the lack of a way to include a module of reusable
code. There is another way to use VBScript (and JavaScript) within a Windows environment, namely
Windows Script Host or WSH. WSH is Microsoft's technology to enable users to program their PCs
in the same way that DOS programmers used Batch files. WSH provides mechanisms for reading
files and the registry, accessing networked PCs and Printers etc.

In addition WSH v2 includes the ability to include another WSH file and thus provides reusable
modules. It works like this, first create a module file called SomeModule.vbs containing:

Function SubtractTwo(N)
SubtractTwo = N - 2
End function

Now create a WSH script file called, say, testModule.wsf, like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<job>
<script type="text/vbscript" src="SomeModule.vbs" />
<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim value, result
WScript.Echo "Type a number"
value = WScript.StdIn.ReadLine
result = SubtractTwo(CInt(value))

WScript.Echo "The result was " &amp; CStr(result)

</script>

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</job>

You can run it under Windows by starting a DOS session and typing:

C:\> cscript testModule.wsf

The structure of the .wsf file is XML and the program lives inside a pair of <job></job> tags,
rather like our <HTML></HTML> tags. Inside the first script tag references a module file called
SomeModule.vbs and the second script tag contains our program which accesses
SubtractTwo within the SomeModule.vbs file. The .vbs file just contains regular VBScript code
with no XML or HTML tags whatsoever.

Notice that to concatenate the strings for the WScript.Echo statement we have to escape the
ampersand (with &amp;) because the statement is part of an XML file! Notice too, that we use the
WScript.Stdin to read user input, you might recall the sidebar in the User Input topic that
discussed stdin and stdout?

This technique works with JavaScript too, or more correctly with Microsoft's version of JavaScript
called JScript, simply by changing the type= attribute. In fact you can even mix languages in WSH
by importing a module written in JavaScript and using it in VBScript code, or vice-versa! To prove
the point, here is the equivalent WSH script using JavaScript to access the VBScript module:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<job>
<script type="text/vbscript" src="SomeModule.vbs" />
<script type="text/javascript">
var value, result;
WScript.Echo("Type a number");
value = WScript.StdIn.ReadLine();
result = SubtractTwo(parseInt(value));

WScript.Echo("The result was " + result);

</script>
</job>

You can see how closely related the two versions are, most of the clever stuff is actually done
through the WScript objects and apart from a few extra parentheses the scripts are very much alike.

I won't use WSH very often in this tutor but occasionally we will delve into it when it offers
capabilities that I cannot demonstrate using the more restricted web browser environment. For
example the next topic will use WSH to show how we can manipulate files using VBScript and
JavaScript. There are a few books available on WSH if you are interested, and Microsoft have a large
section of their web site dedicated to it, complete with sample programs and development tools etc.
You'll find it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/

Next we'll take a look at files and text handling and then, as promised, revisit the business of counting
words in a file. In fact we're eventually going to create a module of text handling functions for our
convenience.

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Things to remember
Functions are a form of module
Functions return values, procedures don't
Python modules normally consist of function definitions in a file
Create new functions with the def keyword in Python
Use Sub or Function in VBScript and function in JavaScript

Previous Contents Next

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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File Handling 12/04/2010

Handling Files
What will we cover?
How to open a file
How to read and write to an open file
How to close a file.
Building an address book
Handling binary data files
Random Access to file data

Handling files often poses problems for beginners although the reason for this puzzles me slightly.
Files in a programming sense are really not very different from files that you use in a word processor
or other application: you open them, do some work and then close them again.

The biggest differences are that in a program you access the file sequentially, that is, you read one
line at a time starting at the beginning. In practice the word processor often does the same, it just
holds the entire file in memory while you work on it and then writes it all back out when you close it.
The other difference is that, when programming, you normally open the file as read only or write only.
You can write by creating a new file from scratch (or overwriting an existing one) or by
appending to an existing one.

One other thing you can do while processing a file is that you can go back to the beginning.

Files - Input and Output

Let's see that in practice. We will assume that a file exists called menu.txt and that it holds a list of
meals:

spam & eggs

spam & chips
spam & spam

Now we will write a program to read the file and display the output - like the 'cat' command in Unix
or the 'type' command in DOS.

# First open the file to read(r)

inp = open("menu.txt","r")
# read the file line by line
for line in inp:
print( line )
# Now close it again
inp.close()

Note 1: open() takes two arguments. The first is the filename (which may be passed as a variable or
a literal string, as we did here). The second is the mode. The mode determines whether we are
opening the file for reading(r) or writing(w), and also whether it's for text or binary usage - by adding
a 'b' to the 'r' or 'w', as in: open(fn,"rb")

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Note 2: We read and close the file using functions preceded by the file variable. This notation is
known as method invocation and is another example of Object Orientation. Don't worry about it for
now, except to realize that it's related in some ways to modules. You can, if it helps, think of a file
variable as being a reference to a module containing functions that operate on files and which we
automatically import every time we create a file type variable.

Note 3: We close the file at the end with the close() method. In Python, files are automatically
closed at the end of the program but it is good practice to get into the habit of closing your files
explicitly. Why? Well, the operating system may not write the data out to the file until it is closed (this
can boost performance). What this means is that if the program exits unexpectedly there is a danger
that your precious data may not have been written to the file! So the moral is: once you finish writing
to a file, close it.

Note 4: We have not specified the full path to the file in the code above so the file will be treated as
being in the current folder. However we can pass a full path name to open() instead of just the file
name. There is a wrinkle when using Windows however, because the \ character used to separate
folders in a Windows path has a special meaning inside a Python string. So, when specifying paths in
Python it is best to always use the / character instead and that
will work on any Operating System including Windows.

Now, consider how you could cope with long files. You couldn't display all of the file on a single
screen so we need to pause after each screenful of text. You might use a line_count variable which
is incremented for each line and then tested to see whether it is equal to 25 (for a 25 line screen). If
so, you request the user to press a key (enter, say) before resetting line_count to zero and
continuing. You might like to try that as an exercise...

Another way of reading a file is to use a while loop and a method of the file object called
readline(). The advantage of this is that we can stop processing the file as soon as we find the data
we need, this can greatly speed things up if processing long files. However it is a little bit more
complex, so lets look at the previous example using a while loop:

# First open the file to read(r)

inp = open("menu.txt","r")
# read the file and print each line
line = inp.readline()
while line:
print( line )
line = inp.readline()
# Now close it again
inp.close()

Note: we read the first line before entering the loop so that the test condition would pass. Thereafter
we printed each line, read the next and so long as it was not empty went around again. Finally, after
exiting the while loop we closed the file. If we wanted to stop at a certain point in the file we would
have introduced a branch condition inside the while loop and if it detected the stop condition we
simply set the line value to an empty string ('') so that the loop will terminate (Recall that an empty
value is treated as a False boolean value in Python tests).

Really that's all there is to it. You open the file, read it in and manipulate it any way you want to.
When you're finished you close the file. However there is one little niggle you may have noticed in the
previous example: the lines read from the file have a newline character at the end, so you wind up
with blank lines using print() (which adds its own newline). To avoid that Python provides a string

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method called strip() which will remove whitespace, or non-printable characters, from both ends of
a string. (It has cousins which can strip one end only called rstrip and lstrip too) If we substitute
the print() line above with:

print( line.rstrip() ) #only strip right hand end

Everything should now work just fine.

To create a 'copy' command in Python, we simply open a new file in write mode and write the lines to
that file instead of printing them. Like this:

# Create the equivalent of: COPY MENU.TXT MENU.BAK

# First open the files to read(r) and write(w)

inp = open("menu.txt","r")
outp = open("menu.bak","w")

# read file, copying each line to new file

for line in inp:
outp.write(line)

print( "1 file copied..." )

# Now close the files

inp.close()
outp.close()

Did you notice that I added a print() statement at the end, just to reassure the user that something
actually happened? This kind of user feedback is usually a good idea.

Because we wrote out the same line that we read in there was no problems with newline characters
here. But if we had been writing out strings which we created, or which we had stripped earlier we
would have needed to add a newline to the end of the output string, like this:

outp.write(line + '\n') # \n is a newline

Let's look at how we might incorporate that into our copy program. Instead of simply copying the
menu we will add todays date to the top. That way we can easily generate a daily menu from the
easily modified text file of meals. All we need to do is write out a couple of lines at the top of the new
file before copying the menu.txt file, like this:

import time
# Create daily menu based on MENU.TXT
# First open the files to read(r) and write(w)
inp = open("menu.txt","r")
outp = open("menu.prn","w")

# Create todays date string

today = time.localtime(time.time())
theDate = time.strftime("%A %B %d", today)

# Add Banner text and a blank line

outp.write("Menu for %s\n\n" % theDate)

# copy each line of menu.txt to new file

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for line in inp:

outp.write(line)

print( "Menu created for %s..." % theDate )

# Now close the files

inp.close()
outp.close()

Note that we use the time module to get todays date ( time.time()) and convert it into a tuple of
values (time.localtime()) which are then used by time.strftime() (check the
documentation for time.strftime to see what else it can do) to produce a string which, when inserted
into a title message using string formatting, looks like:

Menu for Sunday September 19

Spam & Eggs

Spam &...

Although we added two '\n' characters at the end there is only one blank line printed, that's because
one of them is the newline at the end of the title itself. Managing the creation and removal of newline
characters is one of the more irritating aspects of handling text files.

Some Operating Systems Gotchas

Operating systems handle files in different ways. This introduces some niggles into our programs if
we want them to work on multiple operating systems. There are two niggles in particular which can
catch people out and we'll look at them here:

Newlines

The whole subject of newlines and text files is a murky area of non standard implementation by
different operating systems. These differences have their roots in the early days of data
communications and the control of mechanical teleprinters. Basically there are 3 different ways to
indicate a new line:

1. A Carriage Return (CR) character ('\r')

2. A Line Feed (LF) character ('\n')
3. A CR/LF pair ('\r\n').

All three techniques are used in different operating systems. MS DOS (and therefore Windows) uses
method 3. Unix (including Linux) uses method 2. Apple in its original MacOS used method 1, but
now uses method 2 since MacOS X is really a variant of Unix.

So how can the poor programmer cope with this multiplicity of line endings? In many languages she
just has to do lots of tests and take different action per OS. In more modern languages, including
Python, the language provides facilities for dealing with the mess for you. In the case of Python the
assistance comes in the form of the os module which defines a variable called linesep which is set

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to whatever the newline character is on the current operating system. This makes adding newlines
easy, and rstrip() takes account of the OS when it does its work of removing them, so really the
simple way to stay sane, so far as newlines are concerned is: always use rstrip() to remove
newlines from lines read from a file and always add os.linesep to strings being written to a file.

That still leaves the awkward situation where a file is created on one OS and then processed on
another, incompatible, OS and sadly, there isn't much we can do about that except to compare the
end of the line with os.linesep to determine what the difference is.

Specifying Paths

This is more of an issue for Windows users than others although MacOS 9 users may bump into it
occasionally too. As above each OS specifies paths to files using different characters to separate the
drives, folders and files. The generic solution for this is again to use the os module which provides
the os.sep variable to define the current platforms path separator character. In practice you won't
need to use this very often since the path will likely be different for every machine anyway! So
instead you will just enter the full path directly in a string, possibly once for each OS you are
running on. But there is one big gotcha hiding in wait for Windows users...

You saw in the previous section that python treats the string '\n' as a newline character. That is it
takes two characters and treats them as one. In fact there are a whole range of these special
sequences beginning with back slash (\) including:

\n - A new line
\r - A carriage return
\t - A horizontal tab
\v - A vertical tab (sometimes means a new page)
\b - A backspace
\0nn - Any arbitrary octal character code. e.g. the code \033 is the escape character (ESC)

This means that if we have a data file called test.dat and want to open it in Python by specifying
a full Windows path we might expect this to work:

>>> f = open('C:\test.dat')

But Python will see the \t pair as a tab character and complain it cannot find a file called:
C: est.dat.
So how do we get round this inconvenience? There are three solutions:

1. put an 'r' in front of the string. This tells Python to ignore any back slashes and treat it as a
"raw" sting.

>>> print "Hello\nWorld"

>>> print r"Hello\nWorld"
2. Use forward slashes (/) instead of backslashes, Python and Windows will between them sort
out the path for you. This has the added advantage of making your code portable to other
operating systems too.
3. Use a double backslash(\\) since a double backslash character is seen by Python as a single
backslash!

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Thus any of the following will open our data file correctly:

>>> f = open(r'C:\test.dat')
>>> f = open('C:/test.dat')
>>> f = open('C:\\test.dat')

Appending data

One final twist in file processing is that you might want to append data to the end of an existing file.
One way to do that would be to open the file for input, read the data into a list, append the data to the
list and then write the whole list out to a new version of the old file. If the file is short that's not a
problem but if the file is very large, maybe over 100Mb, then you could run out of memory to hold the
list. Fortunately there's another mode "a" that we can pass to open() which allows us to append
directly to an existing file just by writing. Even better, if the file doesn't exist it will open a new file
just as if you'd specified "w".

As an example, let's assume we have a log file that we use for capturing error messages. We don't
want to delete the existing messages so we choose to append the error, like this:

def logError(msg):
err = open("Errors.log","a")
err.write(msg)
err.close()

In the real world we would probably want to limit the size of the file in some way. A common
technique is to create a filename based on the date, thus when the date changes we automatically
create a new file and it is easy for the maintainers of the system to find the errors for a particular day
and to archive away old error files if they are not needed. (Remember, from the menu example above,
that the time module can be used to find out the current date.)

The Address Book Revisited

You remember the address book program we introduced during the Raw Materials topic and then
expanded in the Talking to the User topic? Let's start to make it really useful by saving it to a file and,
of course, reading the file at startup. We'll do this by writing some functions. So in this example we
pull together several of the strands that we've covered in the last few topics.

The basic design will require a function to read the file at startup, another to write the file at the end
of the program. We will also create a function to present the user with a menu of options and a
separate function for each menu selection. The menu will allow the user to:

Add an entry to the address book

Remove an entry from the book
Find and display an existing entry
Quit the program

Loading the Address Book

import os
filename = "addbook.dat"

def readBook(book):
if os.path.exists(filename):

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store = open(filename,'r')
for line in store:
name = line.rstrip()
entry = store.next().rstrip()
book[name] = entry
store.close()

Note 1: We import the os module which we use to check that the file path actually exists before
opening the file.

Note 2: We defined the filename as a module level variable so we can use it both in loading and
saving the data.

Note 3: We use rstrip() to remove the new-line character from the end of the line. Also notice the
next() operation to fetch the next line from the file within the loop. This effectively means we are
reading two lines at a time as we progress through the loop.

Saving the Address Book

def saveBook(book):
store = open(filename, 'w')
for name,entry in book.items():
store.write(name + '\n')
store.write(entry + '\n')
store.close()

Notice we need to add a newline character ('\n') when we write the data. Also note that we write
two lines for each entry, this mirrors the fact that we processed two lines when reading the file.

Getting User Input

def getChoice(menu, length):

print( menu )
prompt = "Select a choice(1-%d): " % length
choice = int( input(prompt) )
return choice

Note: We receive a length parameter which tells us how many menu entries there are. This allows us
to create a prompt that specifies the correct number range.

Adding an Entry

def addEntry(book):
name = input("Enter a name: ")
entry = input("Enter street, town and phone number: ")
book[name] = entry

Removing an entry

def removeEntry(book):
name = input("Enter a name: ")
del(book[name])

Finding an entry

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def findEntry(book):
name = input("Enter a name: ")
if name in book:
print( name, book[name] )
else: print( "Sorry, no entry for: ", name )

Quitting the program

Actually I won't write a separate function for this, instead I'll make the quit option the test in my menu
while loop. So the main program will look like this:

def main():
theMenu = '''
1) Add Entry
2) Remove Entry
3) Find Entry
4) Quit and save
'''
theBook = {}
readBook(theBook)
choice = getChoice(theMenu, 4)
while choice != 4:
if choice == 1:
addEntry(theBook)
elif choice == 2:
removeEntry(theBook)
elif choice == 3:
findEntry(theBook)
else: print( "Invalid choice, try again" )
choice = getChoice(theMenu, 4)
saveBook(theBook)

Now the only thing left to do is call the main() function when the program is run, and to do that we
use a bit of Python magic like this:

if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

This mysterious bit of code allows us to use any python file as a module by importing it, or as a
program by running it. The difference is that when the program is imported, the internal variable
__name__ is set to the module name but when the file is run, the value of __name__ is set to
"__main__". Sneaky, eh?

Now if you type all that code into a new text file and save it as addressbook.py, you should be able to
run it from an OS prompt by typing:

C:\PROJECTS> python addressbook.py

Or just double click the file in Windows Explorer and it should start up in its own DOS window, and
the window will close when you select the quit option.

Or, in Linux:

$ python addressbook.py

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This 60 odd line program is typical of the sort of thing you can start writing for yourself. There are a
couple of things we can do to improve it which I'll cover in the next section, but even as it stands it's a
reasonably useful little tool.

VBScript and JavaScript

Neither VBScript nor JavaScript have native file handling capabilities. This is a security feature to
ensure nobody can read your files when you innocently load a web page, but it does restrict their
general usefulness. However, as we saw with reusable modules there is a way to do it using Windows
Script Host. WSH provides a FileSystem object which allows any WSH language to read files. We
will look at a JavaScript example in detail then show similar code in VBScript for comparison, but as
before the key elements will really be calls to the WScript objects.

Before we can look at the code in detail it's worth taking time to describe the FileSystem Object
Model. An Object Model is a set of related objects which can be used by the programmer. The WSH
FileSystem object model consists of the FSO object, a number of File objects, including the
TextFile object which we will use. There are also some helper objects, most notable of which is, for
our purposes, the TextStream object. Basically we will create an instance of the FSO object, then
use it to create our TextFile objects and from these in turn create TextStream objects to which
we can read or write text. The TextStream objects themselves are what we actually read/write from
the files.

Type the following code into a file called testFiles.js and run it using cscript as described in
the earlier introduction to WSH.

Opening a file

To open a file in WSH we create an FSO object then create a TextFile object from that:

var fileName, fso, txtFile, outFile, line;

// Get file name

fso = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
WScript.Echo("What file name? ");
fileName = WScript.StdIn.Readline();

// open inFile to read, outFile to write

inFile = fso.OpenTextFile(fileName, 1); // mode 1 = Read
fileName = fileName + ".BAK"
outFile = fso.CreateTextFile(fileName);

Reading and Writing a file

// loop over file till it reaches the end

while ( !inFile.AtEndOfStream ){
line = inFile.ReadLine();
WScript.Echo(line);
outFile.WriteLine( line );
}

Closing files

inFile.close();
outFile.close();

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And in VBScript

Save the following as testFIles.ws and then run it using:

cscript testfiles.ws

Or alternatively, put the bit between the script tags into a file called testFile.vbs and run that
instead. The .ws format allows you to mix JavaScript and VBScript code in the same file by simply
using multiple script tags, should you want to...

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<job>
<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim fso, inFile, outFile, inFileName, outFileName
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

WScript.Echo "Type a filename to backup"

inFileName = WScript.StdIn.ReadLine
outFileName = inFileName &amp; ".BAK"

' open the files

Set inFile = fso.OpenTextFile(inFileName, 1)
Set outFile = fso.CreateTextFile(outFileName)

' read the file and write to the backup copy

While not inFile.AtEndOfStream
line = inFile.ReadLine
outFile.WriteLine(line)
Wend

' close both files

inFile.Close
outFile.Close

WScript.Echo inFileName &amp; " backed up to " &amp; outFileName

</script>
</job>

Handling Non-Text Files

Handling text is one of the most common things that programmers do, but sometimes we need to
process raw binary data too. This is very rarely done in VBScript or JavaScript so I will only be
covering how Python does it.

Opening and Closing Binary Files

The key difference between text files and binary files is that text files are composed of octets, or bytes,
of binary data whereby each byte represents a character and the end of the file is marked by a special
byte pattern, known generically as end of file, or eof. A binary file contains arbitrary binary data and
thus no specific value can be used to identify end of file, thus a different mode of operation is required
to read these files. The end result of this is that when we open a binary file in Python (or indeed any
other language) we must specify that it is being opened in binary mode or risk the data being read
being truncated at the first eof character that Python finds in the data. The way we do this in Python
is to add a 'b' to the mode parameter, like this:

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binfile = file("aBinaryFile.bin","rb")

The only difference from opening a text file is the mode value of "rb". You can use any of the other
modes too, simply add a 'b': "wb" to write, "ab" to append.

Closing a binary file is no different to a text file, simply call the close() method of the open file
object:

binfile.close()

Because the file was opened in binary mode there is no need to give Python any extra information, it
knows how to close the file correctly.

Data Representation and Storage

Before we discuss how to access the data within a binary file we need to consider how data is
represented and stored on a computer. All data is stored as a sequence of binary digits, or bits.
These bits are grouped into sets of 8 or 16 called bytes or words respectively. (A group of 4 is
sometimes called a nibble!) A byte can be any one of 256 different bit patterns and these are given
the values 0-255.

The information we manipulate in our programs, strings, numbers etc must all be converted into
sequences of bytes. Thus the characters that we use in strings are each allocated a particular byte
pattern. There were originally several such encodings, but the most common is the ASCII (American
Standard Coding for Information Interchange). Unfortunately pure ASCII only caters for 128 values
which is not enough for non English languages. A new encoding standard known as Unicode has
been produced, which can use data words instead of bytes to represent characters, and allows for
over 65000 characters. ( A more recent increase in spec has raised that to over a million!). These
characters can then be encoded into a more compact data stream. One of the most common
encodings is called UTF-8 and it corresponds closely to the earlier ASCII coding such that every
valid ASCII file is a valid UTF-8 file, although not necessarily the other way around. Unicode
provides a number of different encodings each of which defines which bytes represent each Unicode
numerical value (or code point in Unicode terms). If you are thinking that this is complicated you
are right! It is the cost of building a global computer network that must work in lots of different
languages. The good news if you are an English speaker is that for the most part you can ignore it!
The exception is when reading data from a binary file, when you do need to know which encoding
has been used to interpret the binary data successfully.

Python fully supports Unicode text and we can specify which particular encoding we want to apply
by inserting a special comment at the top of a source file. A string of encoded characters is
considered to be a byte string and has the type bytes whereas a string of unencoded text has the
type str. The default encoding is usually UTF-8 (but, in theory at least, could be different!). I will
not be covering the use of non UTF-8 encodings in this tutorial but there is an extensive
"How-To" document on the Python web site.

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The key thing to realize in all of this is that a binary stream of encoded unicode text is treated as a
string of bytes and Python provides functions to convert between bytes and str values.

In the same way numbers need to be converted to binary codings too. For small integers it is simple
enough to use the byte values directly, but for numbers larger than 255 (or negative numbers, or
fractions) some additional work needs to be done. Over time various standard codings have
emerged for numerical data and most programming languages and operating systems use these. For
example, the American Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) have defined a
number of codings for floating point numbers.

The point of all of this is that when we read a binary file we have to interpret the raw bit patterns
into the correct type of data for our program. It is perfectly possible to interpret a stream of bytes
that were originally written as a character string as a set of floating point numbers. Or course the
original meaning will have been lost but the bit patterns could represent either. So when we read
binary data it is extremely important that we convert it into the correct data type.
The Struct Module

To encode/decode binary data Python provides a module called struct, short for structure.
struct works very much like the format strings we have been using to print mixed data. We provide
a string representing the data we are reading and apply it to the byte stream that we are trying to
interpret. We can also use struct to convert a set of data to a byte stream for writing, either to a
binary file (or even a communications line!).

There are many different conversion format codes but we will only use the integer and string codes
here. (You can look up the others on the Python documentation for the struct module.) The
codes for integer and string are i, and s respectively. The struct format strings consist of sequences
of codes with numbers pre-pended to indicate how many of the items we need. The exception is the
s code where the prepended number means the length of the string. For example 4s means a string of
four characters (note 4 characters not 4 strings!).

Let's assume we wanted to write the address details, from our Address Book program above, as
binary data with the street number as an integer and the rest as a string (This is a bad idea in practice
since street "numbers" sometimes include letters!). The format string would look like:

'i34s' # assuming 34 characters in the address!

To cope with multiple address lengths we could write a function to create the binary string like this:

def formatAddress(address):
# split breaks a string into a list of 'words'
fields = address.split()
number = int(fields[0])
rest = ' '.join(fields[1:])
format = "i%ds" % len(rest) #create the format string
return struct.pack(format, number, rest)

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So we used a string method - split() - (more on them in the next topic!) to split the address string
into its parts, extract the first one as the number and then use another string method, join to join the
remaining fields back together separated by spaces. The length of that string is the number we need in
the struct format string so we use the len() function in conjunction with a normal format string to
build a struct format string. Phew!

formatAddress() will return a sequence of bytes containing the binary representation of our
address. Now that we have our binary data let's see how we can write that to a binary file and then
read it back again.

Reading & Writing Using Struct

Let's create a binary file containing a single address line using the formatAddress() function
defined above. We need to open the file for writing in 'wb' mode, encode the data, write it to the file
and then close the file. Let's try it:

import struct
f = file('address.bin','wb')
data = "10 Some St, Anytown, 0171 234 8765"
bindata = formatAddress(data)
print( "Binary data before saving: ", repr(bindata) )
f.write(bindata)
f.close()

You can check that the data is indeed in binary format by opening address.bin in notepad. The
characters will be readable but the number will not look like 10! In fact it has disappeared! If you have
an editor which can read binary files (e.g vim or emacs) and use that to open address.bin you will
see that the start of the file has 4 bytes. The first of these may look like a newline character and the
rest are zeros. Now it turns out that, just coincidentally, the numerical value of newline is 10! As we
can show using Python:

>>> ord('\n')
10

The ord() function simply returns the numeric value of a given character. So the first 4 bytes are
10,0,0,0 in decimal (or 0xA,0x0,0x0,0x0 in hexadecimal, the system usually used to display
binary data - since it is much more concise than using pure binary).

On a 32 bit computer an integer takes up 4 bytes. So the integer value '10' has been converted by the
struct module into the 4 byte sequence 10, 0, 0, 0. Now on intel micro-processors the byte
sequence is to put the least significant byte first so that, reading it in reverse, gives us the true
"binary" value: 0,0,0,10.

Which is the integer value 10 expressed as 4 decimal bytes. The rest of the data is basically the
original text string and so appears in its normal character format.

Be sure not to save the file from within Notepad since although Notepad can load some binary files it
cannot save them as binary, it will try to convert the binary to text and can corrupt the data in the
process! It is worth pointing out here that the file extension .bin that we used is purely for our
convenience, it has no bearing on whether the file is binary or text format. Some Operating Systems
use the extension to determine what programme they will use to open the file, but you can change the
extension by simply renaming the file, the content will not change it will still be binary or text
whichever it was originally. (You can prove this by renaming a text file in Windows to

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.exe whereupon Windows will treat the file as an executable, but when you try to run it you will get
an error because the text is not really executable binary code! If you now rename it back to .txt the
file will open in Notepad exactly as it did before, the content has not been altered at all - in fact you
could even have opened the text in Notepad while it was named as a .exe and it would have worked
just as well!)

To read our binary data back again we need to open the file in 'rb' mode, read the data into a
sequence of bytes, close the file and finally unpack the data using a struct format string. The
question is: how do we tell what the format string looks like? In general we would need to find the
binary format from the file definition (there are several web sites which provide this information - for
example Adobe publish the definition of their common PDF binary format). In our case we know it
must be like the one we created in formatAddress(), namely 'iNs' where N is a variable number.
How do we determine the value of N?

The struct module provides some helper functions that return the size of each data type, so by firing
up the Python prompt and experimenting we can find out how many bytes of data we will get back for
each data type:

>>> import struct

>>> print struct.calcsize('i')
4
>>> print struct.calcsize('s')
1

Ok, we know that our data will comprise 4 bytes for the number and one byte for each character. So
N will be the total length of the data minus 4. Let's try using that to read our file:

import struct
f = file('address.bin','rb')
data = f.read()
f.close()

fmtString = "i%ds" % (len(data) - 4)

number, rest = struct.unpack(fmtString, data)
rest = str(rest)
address = ' '.join((str(number),rest))

print( "Address after restoring data:", address )

Note: We had to convert rest to a string using the str() function since Python considered it to be
of type bytes (see the sidebar above) which won't work with join().

And that's it on binary data files, or at least as much as I'm going to say on the subject. As you can see
using binary data introduces several complications and unless you have a very good reason I don't
recommend it. But at least if you do need to read a binary file, you can do it (provided you know what
the data represented in the first place of course!)

Random Access to Files

The last aspect of file handling that I'll consider is called random access. Random access means
moving directly to a particular part of the file without reading all the intervening data. Some
programming languages provide a special indexed file type that can do this very quickly but in most
languages its built on top of the normal sequential file access that we have been using up till now.

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The concept used is that of a cursor that marks the current position within the file, literally how many
bytes we are from the beginning. We can move this cursor relative to its current position or relative to
the start of the file. We can also ask the file to tell us where the cursor is currently.

By using a fixed linelength (perhaps by padding our data strings with spaces or some other character
where necessary) we can jump to the start of a particular line by multiplying the length of a line by the
number of lines. This is what gives the impression of random access to the data in the file.

Where am I?

To determine where we are in a file we can use the tell() method of a file. For example if I open a
file and read three lines, I can then ask the file how far into the file I am.

Let's look at an example, first I will create a file with 5 lines of text all the same length (the equal
length business isn't strictly necessary but it does make life easier!). Then I'll read three lines back and
ask where we are. I'll then go back to the beginning, read one line then jump to the third line and print
it, jumping over the second line. Like this:

# create 5 lines of 20 chars (+ \n)

testfile = open('testfile.txt','w')
for i in range(5):
testfile.write(str(i) * 20 + '\n')
testfile.close()

# read 3 lines and ask where we are

testfile = open('testfile.txt','r')
for line in range(3):
print( testfile.readline().strip() )
position = testfile.tell()
print( "At position: ", position, "bytes" )

# go back to the beginning

testfile.seek(0)
print( testfile.readline().strip() ) # repeat first line
lineLength = testfile.tell()
testfile.seek(2*lineLength) # go to end of line 2
print( testfile.readline().strip() ) # the 3rd line
testfile.close()

Note the use of the seek() function to move the cursor. The default operation is to move it to the
byte number specified, as shown here, but extra arguments can be provided that change the indexing
method used. Also note that the value printed by the first tell() depends on the length of a newline
on your platform, on my Windows XP PC it printed 66 indicating that the newline sequence is 2 bytes
long. But since this is a platform specific value and I want to make my code portable I've used
tell() again, after reading one line, to work out how long each line really is. These kind of "cunning
ploys" are often necessary when dealing with platform specific issues!

Things to remember

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Open files before using them

Files can usually only be read or written but not both at the same time
Python's readlines() function reads all the lines in a file, while readline() only reads one
line at a time, which may help save memory.
However you don't usually need to use either since Python's open function works with
for loops.
Close files after use.
Binary files need the mode flag to end in 'b' and you need to interpret the data after reading it -
usually with the struct module.
tell() and seek() enable pseudo-random access to sequential files

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Manipulating Text
What will we cover?
How to split lines of text into character groups
How to search for strings of text within other strings
How to replace text within a string
How to change case of characters

Handling text is one of the most common things that programmers do. As a result there are lots of
specific tools in most programming languages to make this easier. In this section we will look at some
of these and how we might use them in performing typical programming tasks.

Some of the most common tasks that we can do when working with text are:

splitting lines of text into character groups

searching for strings of text within other strings
replacing text within a string
changing case of characters

We will look at how to do each of these tasks using Python and then briefly consider how VBScript
and JavaScript handle text processing.

In Python we use string methods to manipulate text strings. You might recall, from the Raw
Materials topic, that methods are like functions attached to data. We can access the methods using the
same dot notation we use to access functions in a module, but instead of using a module name we use
the data itself. Let's see how that works.

Splitting strings
The first task we consider is how to split a string into its constituent parts. This is often necessary
when processing files since we tend to read a file line by line, but the data may well be contained
within segments of the line. An example of this is our Address Book example, where we might want
to access the individual fields of the entries rather than just print the whole entry.

The Python method we use for this is called split() and it is used like this:

>>> aString = "Here is a (short) String"

>>> print( aString.split() )
['Here', 'is', 'a', '(short)', 'String']

Notice we get a list back containing the words within aString with all the spaces removed. The
default separator for ''.split() is whitespace (ie. tabs, newlines and spaces). Let's try using it
again but with an opening parenthesis as the separator:

>>> print( aString.split('(') )

['Here is a ', 'short) String']

Notice the difference? There are only two elements in the list this time and the opening parenthesis
has been removed from the front of 'short)'. That's an important point to note about
''.split(), that it removes the separator characters. Usually that's what we want, but just
occasionally we'll wish it hadn't!

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There is also a ''.join() method which can take a list (or indeed any other kind of sequence) of
strings and join them together. One confusing feature of ''.join() is that it uses the string on which
we call the method as the joining characters. You'll see what I mean from this example:

>>> lst = ['here','is','a','list','of','words']

>>> print( '-+-'.join(lst) )
here-+-is-+-a-+-list-+-of-+-words
>>> print( ' '.join(lst) )
here is a list of words

It sort of makes sense when you think about it, but it does look wierd when you first see it.

Counting words

Let's revisit that word counting program I mentioned in the functions topic. Recall the Pseudo
Code looked like:

def numwords(aString):
list = split(aString) # list with each element a word
return len(list) # return number of elements in list

for line in file:

total = total + numwords(line) # accumulate totals for each line

print( "File had %d words" % total )

Now we know how to get the lines from the file let's consider the body of the
numwords() function. First we want to create a list of words in a line. That's nothing more than
applying the default ''.split() method. Referring to the Python documentation we find that the
builtin function len() returns the number of elements in a list, which in our case should be the
number of words in the string - exactly what we want.

So the final code looks like:

def numwords(aString):
lst = aString.split() # split() is a method of the string object aString
return len(lst) # return number of elements in the list

inp = file("menu.txt","r")
total = 0 # initialize to zero; also creates variable

for line in inp:

total = total + numwords(line) # accumulate totals for each line

print( "File had %d words" % total )

inp.close()

That's not quite right of course because it counts things like an ampersand character as a word
(although maybe you think it should...). Also, it can only be used on a single file (menu.txt). But it's
not too hard to convert it to read the filename from the command line ( argv[1]) or via
input() as we saw in the Talking to the user section. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Searching Text

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The next common operation we will look at is searching for a sub-string within a longer string. This is
again supported by a Python string method, this time called ''.find() It's basic use is quite simple,
you provide a search string and if Python finds it within the main string it returns the index of the first
character of the substring, if it doesn't find it, it returns -1:

>>> aString = "here is a long string with a substring inside it"

>>> print( aString.find('long') )
10
>>> print( aString.find('oxen') )
-1
>>> print( aString.find('string') )
15

The first two examples are straightforward, the first returns the index of the start of 'long' and the
second returns -1 because 'oxen' does not occur inside aString. The third example throws up an
interesting point, namely that find only locates the first occurrence of the search string, but what do
we do if the search string occurs more than once in the original string?

One option is to use the index of the first occurrence to chop the original string into two pieces and
search again. We keep doing this until we get a -1 result. Like this:

aString = "Bow wow says the dog, how many ow's are in this string?"
temp = aString[:] # use slice to make a copy
count = 0
index = temp.find('ow')
while index != -1:
count += 1
temp = temp[index + 1:] # use slicing
index = temp.find('ow')

print( "We found %d occurrences of 'ow' in %s" % (count, aString) )

Here we just counted occurrences, but we could just as well have collected the index results into a list
for later processing.

The find() method can speed this process up a little by using a one of its extra optional parameters.
That is, a start location within the original string:

aString = "Bow wow says the dog, how many o's are in this string?"
count = 0
index = aString.find('ow') # use default start
while index != -1:
count += 1
start = index + 1
index = aString.find('ow', start) # set new start

print( "We found %d occurrences of 'ow' in %s" % (count, aString) )

This solution removes the need to create a new string each time, which can be a slow process if the
string is long. Also, if we know that the substring will definitely only be within the first so many
characters (or we aren't interested in later occurrences) we can specify both a start and stop value, like
this:

>>> # limit search to the first 20 chars

>>> aString = "Bow wow says the dog, how many ow's are in the string?"

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>>> print( aString.find('the',0,20) )

To complete our discussion of searching there are a couple of nice extra methods that Python
provides to cater for common search situations, namely ''.startswith() and ''.endswith().
From the names alone you probably can guess what these do. They return True or False depending on
whether the original string starts with or ends with the given search string, like this:

>>> print( "Python rocks!".startswith("Perl") )

False
>>> print( "Python rocks!".startswith('Python') )
True
>>> print( "Python rocks!".endswith('sucks!') )
False
>>> print( "Python rocks!".endswith('cks!') )
True

Notice the boolean result. After all, you already know where to look if the answer is True! Also
notice that the search string doesn't need to be a complete word, a substring is fine. You can also
provide a start and stop position within the string, just like ''.find() to effectively test for a
string at any given location within a string. This is not a feature that is used much in practice.

And finally for a simple test of whether a substring exists anywhere within another string you can use
the Python in operator, like this:

>>> if 'foo' in 'foobar': print( 'True' )

True
>>> if 'baz' in 'foobar': print( 'True' )
>>> if 'bar' in 'foobar': print( 'True' )
True

That's all I'll say about searching for now, let's look at how to replace text next.

Replacing text
Having found our text we often want to change it to something else. Again the Python string methods
provide a solution with the ''.replace() method. It takes two arguments: a search string and a
replacement string. The return value is the new string as a result of the replacement.

>>> aString = "Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was dirty!"
>>> print( aString.replace('dirty','white') )
"Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white!"

One interesting difference between ''.find() and ''.replace is that replace, by default, replaces
all occurrences of the search string, not just the first. An optional count argument can limit the
number of replacements:

>>> aString = "Bow wow wow said the little dog"

>>> print( aString.replace('ow','ark') )
Bark wark wark said the little dog
>>> print( aString.replace('ow','ark',1) ) # only one
Bark wow wow said the little dog

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It is possible to do much more sophisticated search and replace operations using something called a
regular expression, but they are much more complex and get a whole topic to themselves in the
"Advanced" section of the tutorial.

Changing the case of characters

One final thing to consider is converting case from lower to upper and vice-versa. This isn't such a
common operation but Python does provide some helper methods to do it for us:

>>> print( "MIXed Case".lower() )

mixed case
>>> print( "MIXed Case".upper() )
MIXED CASE
>>> print( "MIXed Case".swapcase() )
mixED cASE
>>> print( "MIXed Case".capitalize() )
Mixed case
>>> print( 'MIXed Case'.title() )
Mixed Case
>>> print( "TEST".isupper() )
True
>>> print( "TEST".islower() )
False

Note that ''.capitalize() capitalizes the entire string not each word within it - that's title()'s
job!. Also note the two test functions (or predicates) ''.isupper() and ''.islower(). Python
provides a whole bunch of these predicate functions for testing strings, other useful tests include:
''.isdigit(), ''.isalpha() and ''.isspace(). The last checks for all kinds of whitespace
not just literal space characters!

We will be using many of these string methods as we progress through the tutorial, and in particular
the Grammar Counter case study uses several of them.

Text handling in VBScript

Because VBScript descends from BASIC it has a wealth of builtin string handling functions. In fact in
the reference documentation I counted at least 20 functions or methods, not counting those that are
simply there to handle Unicode characters.

What this means is that we can pretty much do all the things we did in Python using VBScript too. I'll
quickly run through the options below:

Splitting text

We start with the Split function:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim s
Dim lst
s = "Here is a string of words"
lst = Split(s) ' returns an array
MsgBox lst(1)
</script>

As with Python you can add a separator value if the default whitespace separation isn't what you need.

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Also as with Python there is a Join function for reversing the process.

Searching for and replacing text

Searching is done with InStr, short for "In String", obviously.

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim s,n
s = "Here is a long string of text"
n = InStr(s, "long")
MsgBox "long is found at position: " & CStr(n)
</script>

The return value is normally the position within the original string that the substring starts. If the
substring is not found then zero is returned (this isn't a problem because VBScript starts its indices at
1, so zero is not a valid index). If either string is a Null a Null is returned, which makes testing error
conditions slightly more tricky with a combined test required.

As with Python we can specify a sub range of the original string to search, using a start value, like
this:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim s,n
s = "Here is a long string of text"
n = InStr(6, s, "long") ' start at position 6
If n = 0 or n = Null Then ' check for errors
MsgBox "Invalid string found"
Else
MsgBox "long is found at position: " & CStr(n)
End If
</script>

Unlike Python we can also specify whether the search should be case-sensitive or not, the default is
case-sensitive.

Replacing text is done with the Replace function. Like this:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim s
s = "The quick yellow fox jumped over the log"
MsgBox Replace(s, "yellow", "brown")
</script>

We can provide an optional final argument specifying how many occurrences of the search string
should be replaced, the default is all of them. We can also specify a start position as for InStr above.

Changing case

Changing case in VBScript is done with UCase and LCase, there is no equivalent of Python's
capitalize or title methods.

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim s
s = "MIXed Case"
MsgBox LCase(s)

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MsgBox UCase(s)
</script>

And that's all I'm going to cover in this tutorial, if you want to find out more check the VBScript help
file for the list of functions.

Text handling in JavaScript

JavaScript is the least well equipped for text handling of our three languages. Even so, the basic
operations are catered for to some degree, it is only in the number of "bells & whistles" that
JavaScript suffers in comparison to VBScript and Python. JavaScript compensates somewhat for its
limitations with strong support for regular expressions (which we cover in a later topic) and these
extend the apparently primitive functions quite significantly, but at the expense of some added
complexity.

Like Python JavaScript takes an object oriented approach to string manipulation, with all the work
being done by methods of the String class.

Splitting Text

Splitting text is done using the split method:

<script type="text/javascript">
var aList, aString = "Here is a short string";
aList = aString.split(" ");
document.write(aList[1]);
</script>

Notice that JavaScript requires the separator character to be provided, there is no default value. The
separator is actually a regular expression and so quite sophisticated split operations are possible.

Searching Text

Searching for text in JavaScript is done via the search() method:

<script type="text/javascript">
var aString = "Round and Round the ragged rock ran a rascal";
document.write( "ragged is at position: " + aString.search("ragged"));
</script>

Once again the search string argument is actually a regular expression so the searches can be very
sophisticated indeed. Notice, however, that there is no way to restrict the range of the original string
that is searched by passing a start position (although this can also be simulated using regular
expression tricks).

JavaScript provides another search operation with slightly different behaviour called match(), I don't
cover the use of match here.

Replacing Text

To do a replace operation we use the replace() method.

<script type="text/javascript">
var aString = "Humpty Dumpty sat on a cat";

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document.write(aString.replace("cat","wall"));
</script>

And once again the search string can be a regular expression, you can begin to see the pattern I
suspect! The replace operation replaces all instances of the search string and, so far as I can tell, there
is no way to restrict that to just one occurence without first splitting the string and then joining it back
together.

Changing case

Changing case is performed by two functions: toLowerCase() and toUpperCase()

<script type="text/javascript">
var aString = "This string has Mixed Case";
document.write(aString.toLowerCase()+ "<BR>");
document.write(aString.toUpperCase()+ "<BR>");
</script>

There is very little to say about this pair, they do a simple job simply. JavaScript, unlike the other
languages we consider provides a wealth of special text functions for processing HTML, this
revealing it's roots as a web programming language. We don't consider these here but they are all
described in the standard documentation.

That concludes our look at text handling, hopefully it has given you the tools you need to process any
text you encounter in your own projects. One final word of advice: always check the documentation
for your language when processing text, there are often powerful tools included for this most
fundamental of programming tasks.

Things to remember
Text processing is a common operation with powerful support built-in to most languages
The most common tasks are splitting text, searching for and replacing text and changing case
Each language provides different levels of support but the three basic operations are nearly
always available.
Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Error Handling 12/04/2010

Handling Errors
What will we cover?
A short history of error handling
Two techniques for handling errors
Defining and raising errors in our code for others to catch

A Brief History of Error Handling

Error handling is the process of catching the errors generated by our program and hiding them from
our users. It doesn't matter too much if we, as programmers get exposed to a Python error message -
we are supposed to understand all that techno speak. But our users are probably not programmers and
they want nice, easy to understand messages when things go wrong, and ideally, they want us to catch
the error and fix it without them ever knowing about it!

And that's where error handling comes in. Almost every language provides a mechanism for catching
errors as they occur, finding out what went wrong and, if possible, taking appropriate action to fix the
problem. Over time there have been a number of different approaches adopted to do this and we
tackle the subject by following the historical development of the technology. In that way you can
hopefully appreciate why the new methods have been introduced. At the end of the topic you should
be able to write user friendly programs that never allow a hint of a Python error message to be seen by
your users.

VBScript is by far the most bizarre of our three languages in the way it handles errors. The reason for
this is that it is built on a foundation of BASIC which was one of the earliest programming languages
(around 1963) and VBScript error handling is one place where that heritage shines through. For our
purposes that's not a bad thing because it gives me the opportunity to explain why VBScript works as
it does by tracing the history of error handling from BASIC through Visual Basic to VBScript. After
that we will look at a much more modern approach as exemplified in both JavaScript and Python.

In traditional BASIC, programs were written with line numbers to mark each one of code.
Transferring control was done by jumping to a specific line using a statement called GOTO (we saw
an example of this in the Branching topic). Essentially this was the only form of control possible. In
this environment a common mode of error handling was to declare an errorcode variable that would
store an integer value. Whenever an error occurred in the program the errorcode variable would be
set to reflect the problem - couldn't open a file, type mismatch, operator overflow etc

This led to code that looked like this fragment out of a fictitious program:

1010 LET DATA = INPUT FILE

1020 CALL DATA_PROCESSING_FUNCTION
1030 IF NOT ERRORCODE = 0 GOTO 5000
1040 CALL ANOTHER_FUNCTION
1050 IF NOT ERRORCODE = 0 GOTO 5000
1060 REM CONTINUE PROCESSING LIKE THIS
...
5000 IF ERRORCODE = 1 GOTO 5100
5010 IF ERRORCODE = 2 GOTO 5200
5020 REM MORE IF STATEMENTS
...
5100 REM HANDLE ERROR CODE 1 HERE
...
5200 REM HANDLE ERROR CODE 2 HERE

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As you can see almost half of the main program is concerned with detecting whether an error
occurred. Over time a slightly more elegant mechanism was introduced whereby the detection of
errors and their handling was partially taken over by the language interpreter, this looked like:

1010 LET DATA = INPUTFILE

1020 ON ERROR GOTO 5000
1030 CALL DATA_PROCESSING_FUNCTION
1040 CALL ANOTHER_FUNCTION
...
5000 IF ERRORCODE = 1 GOTO 5100
5010 IF ERRORCODE = 2 GOTO 5200

This allowed a single line to indicate where the error handling code would reside. It still required the
functions which detected the error to set the ERRORCODE value but it made writing (and reading!)
code much easier.

So how does this affect us? Quite simply Visual Basic still provides this form of error handling
although the line numbers have been replaced with more human friendly labels. VBScript as a
descendant of Visual Basic provides a severely cut down version of this. In effect VBScript allows us
to choose between handling the errors locally or ignoring errors completely.

To ignore errors we use the following code:

On Error Goto 0 ' 0 implies go nowhere

SomeFunction()
SomeOtherFunction()
....

To handle errors locally we use:

On Error Resume Next

SomeFunction()
If Err.Number = 42 Then
' handle the error here
SomeOtherFunction()
...

This seems slightly back to front but in fact simply reflects the historical process as described above.

The default behavior is for the interpreter to generate a message to the user and stop execution of the
program when an error is detected. This is what happens with GoTo 0 error handling, so in effect
GoTo 0 is a way of turning off local control and allowing the interpreter to function as usual.

Resume Next error handling allows us to either pretend the error never happened, or to check the
Error object (called Err) and in particular the number attribute (exactly like the early errorcode
technique). The Err object also has a few other bits of information that might help us to deal with the
situation in a less catastrophic manner than simply stopping the program. For example we can find out
the source of the error, in terms of an object or function etc. We can also get a textual description that
we could use to populate an informational message to the user, or write a note in a log file. Finally we
can change error type by using the Raise method of the Err object. We can also use Raise to
generate our own errors from within our own Functions.

As an example of using VBScript error handling lets look at the common case of trying to divide by
zero:

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<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim x,y,Result
x = Cint(InputBox("Enter the number to be divided"))
y = CINt(InputBox("Enter the number to divide by"))
On Error Resume Next
Result = x/y
If Err.Number = 11 Then ' Divide by zero
Result = Null
End If
On Error GoTo 0 ' turn error handling off again
If VarType(Result) = vbNull Then
MsgBox "ERROR: Could not perform operation"
Else
MsgBox CStr(x) & " divided by " & CStr(y) & " is " & CStr(Result)
End If
</script>

Frankly that's not very nice and while an appreciation of ancient history may be good for the soul,
modern programming languages, including both Python and JavaScript, have much more elegant ways
to handle errors, so let's look at them now.

Error Handling in Python

Exception Handling

In recent programming environments an alternative way of dealing with errors known as exception
handling works by having functions throw or raise an exception. The system then forces a jump out
of the current block of code to the nearest exception handling block. The system provides a default
handler which catches all exceptions which have not already been handled elsewhere and usually
prints an error message then exits.

One big advantage of this style of error handling is that the main function of the program is much
easier to see because it is not mixed up with the error handling code, you can simply read through the
main block without having to look at the error code at all.

Let's see how this style of programming works in practice.

Try/Except

The exception handling block is coded rather like an if...then...else block:

try:
# program logic goes here
except ExceptionType:
# exception processing for named exception goes here
except AnotherType:
# exception processing for a different exception goes here
else:
# here we tidy up if NO exceptions are raised

Python attempts to execute the statements between the try and the first except statement. If it
encounters an error it will stop execution of the try block and jump down to the except statements.
It will progress down the except statements until it finds one which matches the error (or exception)
type and if it finds a match it will execute the code in the block immediately following that exception.
If no matching except statement is found, the error is propagated up to the next level of the program
until, either a match is found or the top level Python interpreter catches the error, displays an error
message and stops program execution - this is what we have seen happening in our programs so far.

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If no errors are found in the try block then the final else block is executed although, in practice, this
feature is rarely used. Note that an except statement with no specific error type will catch all error
types not already handled. In general this is a bad idea, with the exception of the top level of your
program where you may want to avoid presenting Python's fairly technical error messages to your
users, you can use a general except statement to catch any uncaught errors and display a friendly
"shutting down" type message.

It is worth noting that Python provides a traceback module which enables you to extract various
bits of information about the source of an error, and this can be useful for creating log files and the
like. I won't cover the traceback module here but, if you need it, the standard module documentation
provides a full list of the available features.

Let's look at a real example now, just to see how this works:

value = input("Type a divisor: ")

try:
value = int(value)
print( "42 / %d = %d" % (value, 42/value) )
except ValueError:
print( "I can't convert the value to an integer" )
except ZeroDivisionError:
print( "Your value should not be zero" )
except:
print( "Something unexpected happened" )
else: print( "Program completed successfully" )

If you run that and enter a non-number, a string say, at the prompt, you will get the
ValueError message, if you enter 0 you will get the ZeroDivisionError message, if you hit
Ctrl-C it will raise a KeyboardInterrupt exception and you'll see the "Something unexpected..."
message and, finally, if you enter a valid number you will get the result plus the "Program completed"
message.

Try/Finally

There is another type of 'exception' block which allows us to tidy up after an error, it's called a
try...finally block and typically is used for closing files, flushing buffers to disk etc. The
finally block is always executed last regardless of what happens in the try section.

try:
# normal program logic
finally:
# here we tidy up regardless of the
# success/failure of the try block

This becomes very powerful when combined with a try/except block. It looks like this:

print( "Program starting" )

try:
data = open("data.dat")
print( "data file opened" )
value = int(data.readline().split()[2])
print( "The calculated value is %s" % (value/(42-value)) )
except ZeroDivisionError:
print( "Value read was 42" )
finally:

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data.close()
print( "data file closed" )

print( "Program completed" )

Note: The data file should contain a line with a number in the 3rd field, something like:

Foo bar 42

In this case the data file will always be closed regardless of whether an exception is raised in the
try/except block or not. Note that this is different behavior to the else clause of
try/except because it only gets called if no exception is raised, and equally simply putting the code
outside the try/except block would mean the file was not closed if the exception was anything
other than a ZeroDivisionError. Only adding a finally block ensures that the file is
always closed.

Also notice that I put the open() statement inside the try/except block. If I'd actually wanted to
catch a file open error all I'd need to do is add another except block for an IOError. Why not try
that yourself then try opening a non-existent file to see it in action?

Generating Errors

What happens when we want to generate exceptions for other people to catch, in a module say? In
that case we use the raise keyword in Python:

numerator = 42
denominator = int( input("What value will I divide 42 by?") )
if denominator == 0:
raise ZeroDivisionError

This raises a ZeroDivisionError exception which can be caught by a try/except block. To the
rest of the program it looks exactly as if Python had generated the error internally. Another use of the
raise keyword is to propagate an error to a higher level in the program from within an except block.
For example we may want to take some local action, log the error in a file say, but then allow the
higher level program to decide what ultimate action to take. It looks like this:

def div127by(datum):
try:
return 127/(42-datum)
except ZeroDivisionError:
logfile = open("errorlog.txt","w")
logfile.write("datum was 42\n")
logfile.close()
raise

try:
div127by(42)
except ZeroDivisionError:
print( "You can't divide by zero, try another value" )

Notice how the function div127by() catches the error, logs a message in the error file and then
passes the exception back up for the outer try/except block to deal with by calling raise with no
specified error object.

User Defined Exceptions

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We can also define our own exception types for even finer grained control of our programs. We do
this by defining a new exception class (we briefly looked at defining classes in the Raw Materials topic
and will look at it in more detail in the Object Oriented Programming topic later in the tutorial).
Usually an exception class is trivial and contains no content of its own, we simply define it as a
sub-class of Exception and use it as a kind of "smart label" that can be detected by
except statements. A short example will suffice here:

>>> class BrokenError(Exception): pass

...
>>> try:
... raise BrokenError
... except BrokenError:
... print( "We found a Broken Error" )
...

Note that we use a naming convention of adding "Error" to the end of the class name and that we
inherit the behavior of the generic Exception class by including it in parentheses after the name -
we'll learn all about inheritance in the OOP topic.

One final point to note on raising errors. Up until now we have quit our programs by importing sys
and calling the exit() function. Another method that achieves exactly the same result is to raise the
SystemExit error, like this:

>>> raise SystemExit

The main advantage being that we don't need to import sys first.

JavaScript
JavaScript handles errors in a very similar way to Python, using the keywords try, catch and
throw in place of Python's try, except and raise.

We'll take a look at some examples but the principles are exactly the same as in Python. Recent
versions of JavaScript have introduced the finally construct and JavaScript's finally clause can
also be combined with try/catch in a single construct; see the JavaScript documentation for details.

Catching errors

Catching errors is done by using a try block with a set of catch statements, almost identically to
Python:

<script type="text/javascript">
try{
var x = NonExistentFunction();
document.write(x);
}
catch(err){
document.write("We got an error in the code");
}
</script>

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One big difference is that you only get to use one catch statement per try construct, you have to
examine the error passed to see what kind it is inside the catch block. This is, in my view, a bit more
messy than Python's multiple except style based on exception type. You can see a basic example of
testing the error value in the code below.

Raising errors

Similarly we can raise errors by using the throw keyword just as we used the raise keyword in
Python. We can also create our own error types in JavaScript as we did in Python but a much easier
method is just to use a string.

<script type="text/javascript">
try{
throw("New Error");
}
catch(e){
if (e == "New Error")
document.write("We caught a new error");
else
document.write("An unexpected error found");
}
</script>

And that's all I'll say about error handling. As we go through the more advanced topics coming up you
will see error handling in use, just as you will see the other basic concepts such as sequences, loops
and branches. In essence you now have all of the tools at your disposal that you need to create
powerful programs. It might be a good idea to take some time out to try creating some programs of
your own, just a couple, to try to sound these ideas into your head before we move on to the next set
of topics. Here are a few sample ideas:

A simple game such as OXO or Hangman

A basic database, maybe based on our address book, for storing details of your video, DVD or
CD collection.
A diary utility that will let you store important events or dates and, if you feel really keen, that
automatically pops up a reminder.

To complete any of the above you will need to use all of the language features we have discussed and
probably a few of the language modules too. Remember to keep checking the documentation, there
will probably be quite a few tools that will make the job easier if you look for them. Also don't forget
the power of the Python >>> prompt. Try things out there until you understand how they work then
transfer that knowledge into your program - it's how the professionals do it! Most of all, have fun!

See you in the Advanced section :-)

Things to remember
Check VBScript error codes using an if statement
Catch exceptions with a Python except or JavaScript catch clause
Generate exceptions using the Python raise or JavaScript throw keyword
Error types can be a class in Python or a simple string in JavaScript
Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Namespaces 12/04/2010

Namespaces
What will we cover?
The meaning of namespace and scope and why they are important
How namespaces work in Python
Namespaces in VBScript and JavaScript

Introduction
What's a namespace? I hear you ask. Well, it's kinda hard to explain. Not because they are especially
complicated, but because every language does them differently. The concept is pretty straightforward,
a namespace is a space or region, within a program, where a name (of a variable, function, class etc) is
valid. We actually use this idea in everyday life. Suppose you work in a big company and there is a
colleague called Joe. In the accounts department there is another guy called Joe who you see
occasionally but not often. In that case you refer to your colleague as "Joe" and the other one as "Joe
in Accounts". You also have a colleague called Susan and there is another Susan in Engineering with
whom you work closely. When referring to them you might say "Our Susan" or "Susan from
Engineering". Do you see how you use the department name as a qualifier? That's what namespaces
do in a program, they tell both programmers and the translator which of several identical names is
being referred to.

They came about because early programming languages (like BASIC) only had Global Variables,
that is, ones which could be seen throughout the program - even inside functions. This made
maintenance of large programs difficult since it was easy for one bit of a program to modify a variable
without other parts of the program realizing it - this was called a side-effect. To get round this, later
languages (including modern BASICs) introduced the concept of namespaces. (C++ has taken this to
extremes by allowing the programmer to create their own namespaces anywhere within a program.
This is useful for library creators who might want to keep their function names unique when mixed
with libraries provided by another supplier.)

Another term used to describe a namespace is scope. The scope of a name is the extent of a program
whereby that name can be unambiguously used, for example inside a function or a module. A name's
namespace is exactly the same as it's scope. There are a few very subtle differences between the terms
but only a Computer Scientist pedant would argue with you, and for our purposes namespace and
scope are identical.

Python's approach
In Python every module creates it's own namespace. To access those names we have to either precede
them with the name of the module or explicitly import the names we want to use into our module's
namespace. Nothing new there, we've been doing it with the sys and time modules already. (A
class definition also creates its own namespace. Thus, to access a method or property of a class, we
need to use the name of the instance variable or the class name first. We'll talk a lot more about that in
the OOP topic.)

In Python there are a total of five possible namespaces (or scopes):

1. Built in scope - names defined within Python itself, these are always available from anywhere
in your program.

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2. Module scope - names defined, and therefore visible within a file or module, confusingly this is
referred to as global scope in Python whereas global normally means visible from anywhere in
other languages.
3. Local scope - names defined within a function or a class method
4. Class scope - names defined inside classes, we'll touch on these in the OOP topic.
5. Nested scope - a slightly complex topic which you can pretty much ignore!

Let's take a look at a piece of code that includes examples of all of these (except class and nested):

def square(x):
return x*x

data = int(input('Type a number to be squared: '))

print( data, 'squared is: ', square(data) )

The following table lists each name and the scope to which it belongs:
Name Namespace
square Module/global
x local (to square)
data Module/global
int built-in
input built-in
print built-in

Note that we don't count def or return as names because they are keywords or, part of the language
definition, if you try to use a keyword as the name of a variable or function you will get an error.

So far so good. Now how does this come together when variables in different namespaces have the
same name? Or when we need to reference a name that is not in the current namespace?

Accessing Names outside the Current Namespace

Here we look in more detail at exactly how Python locates names, even when the names we are using
are not in the immediate namespace. It is resolved as follows, Python will look:

1. within it's local namespace (the current function),

2. within the module scope (the current file),
3. the built-in scope.

But what if the name is in a different module? Well, we import the module, as we've already seen
many times in the tutorial. Importing the module actually makes the module name visible in our
module namespace. We can then use the module name to access the variable names within the module
using our familiar module.name style. This explains why, in general, it is not a good idea to import
all the names from a module into the current file: there is a danger that a module name will be the
same as one of your variables and one of them will mask the other causing strange behavior in the
program.

For example let's define two modules, where the second imports the first:

##### module first.py #########

spam = 42

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def print42(): print( spam )

###############################

##### module second.py ########

from first import * # import all names from first

spam = 101 # create spam variable, hiding first's version

print42() # what gets printed? 42 or 101?

################################

If you thought it would print 101 then you were wrong (and I admit I expected that when I first wrote
the example!). The reason why it prints 42 instead has to do with the definition of a variable in Python
as we described it away back in the Raw Materials topic. Recall that a name is simply a label used to
reference an object. Now in the first module the name print42 refers to the function object defined
in the module (if this sounds odd there's more explanation in the advanced topic Functional
Programming where it discusses something called a lambda expression). So although we imported the
name into our module we did not import the function, which still refers to its own module's version of
spam. Thus when we created our new spam variable it has no effect on the function referred to by the
name print42

All of that confusion should serve to illustrate why, although it's more typing, it is much safer to
access names in imported modules using the dot notation. There are a few modules, such as Tkinter
which we'll meet later, which are commonly used by importing all of the names, but they are written in
such a way to minimize the risk of name conflicts, although the risk always exists and can create very
hard to find bugs.

Finally there is another safe way to import a single name from a module, like this:

from sys import exit

Here we only bring the exit function into the local namespace. We cannot use any other sys
names, not even sys itself!

Avoiding Name Clashes

If a function refers to a variable called X and there exists an X within the function (local scope) then
that is the one that will be seen and used by Python. It's the programmer's job to avoid name clashes
such that a local variable and module variable of the same name are not both required in the same
function - the local variable will mask the module name.

There is no problem if we just want to read a global variable inside a function, Python simply looks
for the name locally, and not finding it will look globally (and if need be at the built-in namespace
too). The problem arises when we want to assign a value to a global variable. That would normally
create a new local variable inside the function. So, how can we assign a value to a global variable
without creating a local variable of the same name? We can achieve this by use of the
global keyword:

var = 42
def modGlobal():
global var # prevent creation of a local var
var = var - 21

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def modLocal():
var = 101

print( var ) # prints 42

modGlobal()
print( var ) # prints 21
modLocal()
print( var ) # still prints 21

Here we see the global variable being changed by the modGlobal function but not changed by the
modLocal function. The latter simply created its own internal variable and assigned it a value. At the
end of the function that variable was garbage collected and its existence was unseen at the module
level.

In general you should minimize the use of 'global' statements, it's usually better to pass the variable in
as a parameter and then return the modified variable. Here is the modGlobal function above rewritten
to avoid using a global statement:

var = 42
def modGlobal(aVariable):
return aVariable - 21

print( var )
var = modGlobal(var)
print( var )

In this case we assign the return value from the function to the original variable while also passing it in
as an argument. The result is the same but the function now has no dependencies on any code outside
itself - this makes it much easier to reuse in other programs. It also makes it much easier to see how
the global value gets changed - we can see the explicit assignment taking place.

We can see all of this at work in this example (which does nothing very useful, it is purely about
illustrating the points made so far!):

# variables with module scope

W = 5
Y = 3

#parameters are like function variables

#so X has local scope
def spam(X):

#tell function to look at module level and not create its own W
global W

Z = X*2 # new variable Z created with local scope

W = X+5 # use module W as instructed above

if Z > W:
# pow is a 'builtin-scope' name
print( pow(Z,W) )
return Z
else:
return Y # no local Y so uses module version

print("W,Y = ", W, Y )
for n in [2,4,6]:

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print( "Spam(%d) returned: " % n, spam(n) )

print( "W,Y = ", W, Y )

VBScript
VBScript takes a fairly straightforward approach to scoping rules: if a variable is outside a function or
subroutine then it is globally visible, if a variable is inside a function or subroutine it is local to that
module. The programmer is responsible for managing all naming conflicts that might arise. Because all
VBScript variables are created using the Dim statement there is never any ambiguity about which
variable is meant as is the case with Python.

There are some slight twists that are unique to web pages, namely that regardless of <script> tag
boundaries global variables are visible across an entire file, not just within the <script> tag in which
they are defined.

We will illustrate those points in the following code:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Dim aVariable
Dim another
aVariable = "This is global in scope"
another = "A Global can be visible from a function"
</script>

<script type="text/vbscript">
Sub aSubroutine
Dim aVariable
aVariable = "Defined within a subroutine"
MsgBox aVariable
MsgBox another
End Sub
</script>

<script type="text/vbscript">
MsgBox aVariable
aSubroutine
MsgBox aVariable
</script>

There are a couple of extra scoping features in VBScript that allow you to make variables accessible
across files on a web page (e.g from an index frame to a content frame and vice-versa). However we
won't be going into that level of web page programming here so I'll simply alert you to the existence
of the Public and Private keywords.

And JavaScript too

JavaScript follows much the same rules, variables declared inside a function are only visible within the
function. Variables outside a function can be seen inside the function as well as by code on the
outside. As with VBScript there are no conflicts as to which variable is intended because variables are
explicitly created with the var statement.

Here is the equivalent example as above but written in JavaScript:

<script type="text/javascript">
var aVariable, another; // global variables

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aVariable = "This is Global in scope<BR>";

another = "A global variable can be seen inside a function<BR>";

function aSubroutine(){
var aVariable; // local variable
aVariable = "Defined within a function<BR>";
document.write(aVariable);
document.write(another);
}

document.write(aVariable);
aSubroutine();
document.write(aVariable);

</script>

This should, by now, be straightforward.

Things to Remember
Scoping and Namespaces are different terms for the same thing.
The concepts are the same in every language but the precise rules can vary.
Python has 5 scopes - class, nested, file (global), function (local) and built-in. The last 3 are
the most significant in everyday programming.
VBScript and JavaScript each have 2 scopes - file (global) and function (local).

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Regular Expressions
What will we cover?
What regular expressions are
How to use regular expressions in Python programs
Regex support in JavaScript and VBScript

Definition
Regular expressions are groups of characters that describe a larger group of characters. They describe
a pattern of characters for which we can search in a body of text. They are very similar to the concept
of wild cards used in file naming on most operating systems, whereby an asterisk(*) can be used to
represent any sequence of characters in a file name. So *.py means any file ending in .py. In fact
filename wild-cards are a very small subset of regular expressions.

Regular expressions are extremely powerful tools and most modern programming languages either
have built in support for using regular expressions or have libraries or modules available that you can
use to search for and replace text based on regular expressions. A full description of them is outside
the scope of this tutor, indeed there is at least one whole book dedicated to regular expressions and if
your interest is roused I recommend that you investigate the O'Reilly book.

One interesting feature of regular expressions is that they manifest similarities of structure to
programs. Regular expressions are patterns constructed from smaller units. These units are:

single characters
wildcard characters
character ranges or sets and
groups which are surrounded by parentheses.

Note that because groups are a unit, so you can have groups of groups and so on to an arbitrary level
of complexity. We can combine these units in ways reminiscent of a programming language using
sequences, repetitions or conditional operators. We’ll look at each of these in turn. So that we can try
out the examples you will need to import the re module and use it’s methods. For convenience I will
assume you have already imported re in most of the examples shown.

Sequences
As ever, the simplest construct is a sequence and the simplest regular expression is just a sequence of
characters:

red

This will match, or find, any occurrence of the three letters ‘r’,’e’ and ‘d’ in order, in a string.
Thus the words red, lettered and credible would all be found because they contain ‘red’ within them.
To provide greater control over the outcome of matches we can supply some special characters
(known as metacharacters) to limit the scope of the search:
Metacharacters used in sequences

Expression Meaning Example

^red only at the start of a line red ribbons are good

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red$ only at the end of a line I love red

\Wred only at the start of a word it’s redirected by post
red\W only at the end of a word you covered it already

The metacharacters above are known as anchors because they fix the position of the regular
expression within a sentence or word. There are several other anchors defined in the re module
documentation which we don’t cover in this topic.

Sequences can also contain wildcard characters that can substitute for any character. The wildcard
character is a period. Try this:

>>> import re
>>> re.match('be.t', 'best')
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x01365AA0>
>>> re.match('be.t', 'bess')

The message in angle brackets tells us that the regular expression ‘be.t’, passed as the first
argument matches the string ‘best’ passed as the second argument. ‘be.t’ will also match ‘beat’,
‘bent’, ‘belt’, etc. The second example did not match because 'bess' didn’t end in t, so no
MatchObject was created. Try out a few more matches to see how this works. (Note that
match() only matches at the front of a string, not in the middle, we can use search() for that, as
we shall see later!)

The next unit is a range or set. This consists of a collection of letters enclosed in square brackets and
the regular expression will search for any one of the enclosed letters.

>>> re.match('s[pwl]am', 'spam')

<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x01365AD8>

This would also match 'swam' or 'slam' but not 'sham' since 'h' is not included in the regular expression
set.

By putting a ^ sign as the first element of the group we can say that it should look for any character
except those listed, thus in this example:

>>> re.match('[^f]ool', 'cool')

<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x01365AA0>
>>> re.match('[^f]ool','fool')

we can match ‘cool’ and ‘pool’ but we will not match ‘fool’ since we are looking for any character
except 'f' at the beginning of the pattern.

Finally we can group sequences of characters, or other units, together by enclosing them in
parentheses, which is not particularly useful in isolation but is useful when combined with the
repetition and conditional features we look at next.

Repetition
We can also create regular expressions which match repeated sequences of characters by using some
more special characters. We can look for a repetition of a single character or group of characters
using the following metacharacters:

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Metacharacters used in repetition

Expression Meaning Example

zero or one of the preceding character. Note pythonl?y matches:
‘?’ the zero part there since that can trip you up pythony
if you aren’t careful. pythonly
pythonl*y matches both of the above, plus:
looks for zero or more of the preceding pythonlly
‘*’
character. pythonllly
etc.
pythonl+y matches:
pythonly
looks for one or more of the preceding
‘+’ pythonlly
character.
pythonllly
etc.
looks for n to m repetitions of the preceding fo{1,2} matches:
{n,m}
character. fo or foo

All of these repetition characters can be applied to groups of characters too. Thus:

>>> re.match('(.an){1,2}s', 'cans')

<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x013667E0>

The same pattern will also match: ‘cancans’ or ‘pans’ or ‘canpans’ but not ‘bananas’ since there is no
character before the second 'an' group. (How could we modify the search to work with bananas as
well? Hint: Look at the other repeat specifiers - and don't forget the extra 'a' at the end of bananas)

There is one caveat with the {m,n} form of repetition which is that it does not limit the match to only
n units. Thus the example in the table above, fo{1,2} will successfully match fooo because it
matches the foo at the beginning of fooo. Thus if you want to limit how many characters are
matched you need to follow the multiplying expression with an anchor or a negated range. In our case
fo{1,2}[^o] would prevent fooo from matching since it says match 1 or 2 ‘o’s followed by
anything other than an ‘o’ - but, it must be followed by something, so now 'foo' doesn't match! This
illustrates the fickle nature of regular expressions. They can be very difficult to get just right and you
need to be very careful to test them thoroughly! The actual pattern needed to allow 'foo', and 'foobar'
but not 'fooo' is: 'fo{1,2}[^o]*$'. That is, 'fo' or 'foo' followed by zero or more non o's and the
end of the line. (In fact even this is not completely foolproof, but we need to cover a few more
elements before we can really nail it!)

Greedy expressions
Regular expressions are said to be greedy. What that means is that the matching and searching
functions will match as much as possible of the string rather than stopping at the first complete match.
Normally this doesn’t matter too much but when you combine wildcards with repetition operators you
can wind up grabbing more than you expect.

Consider the following example. If we have a regular expression like a.*b that says we want to find
an a followed by any number of characters up to a b then the match function will search from the first
a to the last b. That is to say that if the searched string includes more than one 'b' all but the last one
will be included in the .* part of the expression. Thus in this example:

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re.match('a.*b',’abracadabra')

The MatchObject has matched all of abracadab. Not just the first ab. This greedy matching
behaviour is one of the most common errors made by new users of regular expressions.

To prevent this ‘greedy’ behaviour simply add a ‘?’ after the repition character, like so:

re.match('a.*?b','abracadabra')

which will now only match ‘ab’.

Conditionals
The final piece in the jigsaw is to make the regular expression search for optional elements or to select
one of several patterns. We’ll look at each of these options separately:

Optional elements

You can specify that a character is optional using the zero or more repetition metacharacters:

>>> re.match('computer?d?', 'computer')

<re.MatchObject instance at 864890>

will match compute, computer or computed. However, it will also match computerd, which we
don’t want.

By using a range within the expression we can be more specific. Thus:

>>> re.match('compute[rd]$','computer')
<re.MatchObject instance at 874390>

will select only computer and computed but reject the unwanted computerd.

And if we add a ? after the range we can also allow compute to be selected but still avoid
computerd.

Optional Expressions

In addition to matching options from a list of characters we can also match based on a choice of
sub-expressions. We mentioned earlier that we could group sequences of characters in parentheses,
but in fact we can group any arbitrary regular expression in parentheses and treat it as a unit. In
describing the syntax I will use the notation (RE) to indicate any such regular expression grouping.

The situation we want to examine here is the case whereby we want to match a regular expression
containing (RE)xxxx or (RE)yyyy where xxxx and yyyy are different patterns. Thus, for example
we want to match both premature and preventative. We can do this by using a selection
metacharacter ( |):

>>> regexp = 'pre(mature|ventative)'

>>> re.match(regexp,'premature')
<re.MatchObject instance at 864890>
>>> re.match(regexp,'preventative')
<re.MatchObject instance at 864890>

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>>> re.match(regexp,'prelude')

Notice that when defining the regular expression we had to include the full text of both options inside
the parentheses, rather than just (e|v) otherwise the option would have been restricted to
prematureentative or prematurventative. In other words only the letters e and v would have
formed the options not the full length groups.

Now, using this technique we can come back to the example above where we want to capture 'fo' or
'foo' but not 'fooo' plus whatever comes after. We left it with a regular expression consisting of:
fo{1,2}[^o]*$. The problem with this one is that if the string following the 'fo' or 'foo' contains an
'o' the match fails. By using a choice of expressions we can get round that. We want the match to
work where our pattern is either the end of the line or followed by any non 'o' character. That looks
like: fo{1,2}($|[^o]). And that finally gives us what we wanted. Remember, when using regular
expressions, always test thoroughly to ensure you are not catching more than you want, and are
catching all that you want.

A Few Extras
The re module has many features which we don't discuss here so it is worth studying the module
documentation. One area I'd like to draw to your attention is the set of flags that you can use when
compiling expressions with the re.compile() function. These flags control things like whether the
pattern matches across lines, or ignores case etc.

Another feature that you can find in the standard Python distribution is a regular expression testing
tool. It allows you to type in an expression then try different values against it to see if they match.
You can find this in the Tools/Scripts folder and the file is redemo.py. Unfortunately there is a
small bug in the version that ships with Python v3.1. The import statement at the top needs to be
changed from

from TKinter import *

to

from tkinter import *

If you make that small change it should work fine, and by the time you read this it should have been
fixed in the distribution too. Have fun!

Using Regular Expressions in Python.

We’ve seen a little of what regular expressions look like but what can we do with them? And how do
we do it in Python? To take the first point first, we can use them as very powerful search tools in text.
We can look for lots of different variations of text strings in a single operation, we can even search for
non printable characters such as blank lines using some of the metacharacters available. We can also
replace these patterns using the methods and functions of the re module. We’ve already seen the
match() function at work, there are several other functions, some of which are described below:
re Module functions and methods

Function/Method Effect
match(RE,string) if RE matches the start of the string it returns a match object

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search(RE,string) if RE is found anywhere within the string a match object is returned

split(RE, string) like string.split() but uses the RE as a separator
returns a string produced by substituting replace for re at the first matching
sub(RE, replace, string) occurrence of RE. Note this function has several additional features, see the
documentation for details.
findall(RE, string) Finds all occurrences of RE in string, returning a list of match objects
produces a regular expression object which can be reused for multiple
compile(RE) operations with the same RE. The object has all of the above methods but
with an implied re and is more efficient than using the function versions.

Note that this is not a full list of re’s methods and functions and that those listed have some optional
parameters that can extend their use. The listed functions are the most commonly used operations and
are sufficient for most needs.

A Practical Example Using Regular Expressions

As an example of how we might use regular expressions in Python let’s create a program that will
search an HTML file for an IMG tag that has no ALT section. If we find one we will add a message
to the owner to create more user friendly HTML in future!

import re

# detect 'IMG' in upper/lower case allowing for

# zero or more spaces between the < and the 'I'
img = '< *[iI][mM][gG] '

# allow any character up to the 'ALT' or 'alt' before >

alt = img + '.*[aA][lL][tT].*>'

# open file and read it into list

filename = input('Enter a filename to search ')
inf = open(filename,'r')
lines = inf.readlines()

# if the line has an IMG tag and no ALT inside

# add our message as an HTML comment
for i in range(len(lines)):
if ( re.search(img,lines[i]) and not
re.search(alt,lines[i]) ):
lines[i] += '<!-- PROVIDE ALT TAGS ON IMAGES! -->\n'

# Now write the altered file and tidy up.

inf.close()
outf = open(filename,'w')
outf.writelines(lines)
outf.close()

Notice two points about the above code. First we use re.search instead of re.match because
search finds the patterns anywhere in the string whereas match only looks at the start of the string.
Secondly we put an outer pair of parentheses around the two tests. These are not strictly necessary
but they allow us to break the test into two lines which are easier to read, especially if there are many
expressions to be combined.

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This code is far from perfect because it doesn’t consider the case where the IMG tag may be split over
several lines, but it illustrates the technique well enough for our purposes. Of course such wanton
vandalism of HTML files shouldn’t really be encouraged, but then again anyone who doesn’t provide
ALT tags probably deserves all they get!

Finally, regular expressions have limitations and for formally defined data structures, like HTML,
there are often other tools, known as parsers that are more effective, reliable, and easier to use
correctly, than regular expressions. But for complex searches in free text regular expressions can
solve a lot of problems. Just be sure to test thoroughly.

We’ll see regular expressions at work again in the Grammar Counter case study, meantime
experiment with them and check out the other methods in the re module. We really have just
scratched the surface of what’s possible using these powerful text processing tools.

JavaScript
JavaScript has good support for regular expressions built into the language. In fact the string search
operations we used earlier are actually regular expression searches, we simply used the most basic
form - a simple sequence of characters. All of the rules we discussed for Python apply equally to
Javascript except that regular expressions are surrounded in slashes(/) instead of quotes. Here are
some examples to illustrate their use:

<Script type="text/javascript">
var str = "A lovely bunch of bananas";
document.write(str + "<BR>");
if (str.match(/^A/)) {
document.write("Found string beginning with A<BR>");
}
if (str.match(/b[au]/)) {
document.write("Found substring with either ba or bu<BR>");
}
if (!str.match(/zzz/)) {
document.write("Didn't find substring zzz!<BR>");
}
</Script>

The first two succeed the third doesn't, hence the negative test.

VBScript
VBScript does not have built in regular expressions like JavaScript but it does have a Regular
Expression object that can be instantiated and used for searches, replacement etc. It can also be
controlled to ignore case and to search for all instances or just one. It is used like this:

<Script type="text/vbscript">
Dim regex, matches
Set regex = New RegExp

regex.Global = True
regex.Pattern = "b[au]"

Set matches = regex.Execute("A lovely bunch of bananas")

If matches.Count > 0 Then
MsgBox "Found " & matches.Count & " substrings"
End If
</Script>

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That's all I'll cover here but there is a wealth of subtle sophistication in regular expressions, we have
literally just touched on their power in this short topic. Fortunately there is also a wealth of online
information about their use, plus the excellent O'Reilly book mentioned at the start. My advice is to
take it slowly and get accustomed to their vagaries as well as their virtues.
Points to remember
Regular expressions are text patterns which can improve the power and efficiency of text
searches
Regular expressions are notoriously difficult to get right and can lead to obscure bugs -
handle with care.
Regular Expressions are not a cure all and often a more sophisticated approach may be
needed, if it doesn't work after say 3 attempts consider another approach!
Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Classes 12/04/2010

Object Oriented Programming

What will we cover?
What is an object?
What is a Class?
What are polymorphism and inheritance?
Creating, Storing and using objects

What is Object Oriented Programming?

Now we move onto what might have been termed an advanced topic up until about 10 years ago.
Nowadays 'Object Oriented Programming has become the norm. Languages like Java and Python
embody the concept so much that you can do very little without coming across objects somewhere.
So what's it all about?

The best introductions are, in my opinion:

Object Oriented Analysis by Peter Coad & Ed Yourdon.

Object Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications by Grady Booch (the 1st edition if
you can find it)
Object Oriented Software Construction by Bertrand Meyer (definitely the 2nd edition of this
one)

These increase in depth, size and academic exactitude as you go down the list. For most
non-professional programmers' purposes the first is adequate. For a more programming focused
introduction try Object Oriented Programming by Timothy Budd(2nd edition). This uses several
languages to illustrate object oriented programming techniques. It is much more strongly oriented
towards writing programs than any of the other books which cover the whole gamut of theory and
principle behind object orientation, at the design level as well as at the code level. Finally for a whole
heap of info on all topics OO try the Web link site at: http://www.cetus-links.org

Assuming you don't have the time nor the inclination to research all these books and links right now,
I'll give you a brief overview of the concept. (Note:Some people find OO hard to grasp others 'get it'
right away. Don't worry if you come under the former category, you can still use objects even without
really 'seeing the light'.)

One final point: it is possible to implement an Object Oriented design in a non OO language through
coding conventions, but it's usually an option of last resort rather than a recommended strategy. If
your problem fits well with OO techniques then it's best to use an OO language. Most modern
languages, including Python, VBScript and JavaScript support OOP quite well. That having been said
I will be using Python throughout all the examples and only showing the basic concepts in VBScript
and JavaScript with little additional explanation.

Data and Function - together

Objects are collections of data and functions that operate on that data. These are bound together so
that you can pass an object from one part of your program and they automatically get access to not
only the data attributes but the operations that are available too. This combining of data and function
is the very essence of Object Oriented Programming and is known as encapsulation. (Some

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programming languages make the data invisible to users of the object and thus require that the data be
accessed via the object's methods. This technique is properly known as data hiding, however in some
texts data hiding and encapsulation are used interchangeably.)

As an example of encapsulation, a string object would store the character string but also provide
methods to operate on that string - search, change case, calculate length etc.

Objects use a message passing metaphor whereby one object passes a message to another object and
the receiving object responds by executing one of its operations, a method. So a method is
invoked on receipt of the corresponding message by the owning object. There are various notations
used to represent this but the most common mimics the access to items in modules - a dot. Thus, for a
fictitious widget class:

w = Widget() # create new instance, w, of widget

w.paint() # send the message 'paint' to it

This would cause the paint method of the widget object to be invoked.

Defining Classes
Just as data has various types so objects can have different types. These collections of objects with
identical characteristics are collectively known as a class. We can define classes and create
instances of them, which are the actual objects. We can store references to these objects in variables
in our programs.

Let's look at a concrete example to see if we can explain it better. We will create a message class that
contains a string - the message text - and a method to print the message.

class Message:
def __init__(self, aString):
self.text = aString
def printIt(self):
print( self.text )

Note 1:One of the methods of this class is called __init__ and it is a special method called a
constructor. The reason for the name is that it is called when a new object instance is created or
constructed. Any variables assigned (and hence created in Python) inside this method will be unique to
the new instance. There are a number of special methods like this in Python, nearly all distinguished by
the __xxx__ naming format. The exact timing of when a constructor is called varies between
languages, in Python init gets called after the instance has actually been created in memory, in other
languages the constructor actually returms the instance itself. The difference is sufficiently subtle that
you don't usually need to worry about it.

Note 2:Both the methods defined have a first parameter self. The name is a convention but it
indicates the object instance. As we will soon see this parameter is filled in by the interpreter at
run-time, not by the programmer. Thus printIt is called, on an instance of the class (see below),
with no arguments: m.printIt().

Note 3:We called the class Message with a capital 'M'. This is purely convention, but it is fairly
widely used, not just in Python but in other OO languages too. A related convention says that method
names should begin with a lowercase letter and subsequent words in the name begin with uppercase
letters. Thus a method called "calculate current balance" would be written:
calculateCurrentBalance.

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You may want to briefly revisit the 'Raw Materials' section and look again at 'user defined types'. The
Python address example should be a little clearer now. Essentially the only kind of user-defined type
in Python is a class. A class with attributes but no methods (except __init__ ) is effectively
equivalent to a construct called a record or struct in some programming languages..

A Graphical Notation
The software engineering community have adopted a graphical notation for describing classes and
objects and their relationships to each other. This notation is called the Unified Modelling
Language (or UML) and is a powerful design tool. In total UML contains many diagrams and icons
but we will only look at a few here that may help you grasp the concepts.

The first and most important icon we meet in UML is the class description, it consists of a box with
three compartments. The top compartment contains the class name, the middle compartment contains
the class attributes, or data, and the bottom compartment contains the methods, or functions, of the
class.

The Message class defined above would look like this:

We will show other UML icons as we develop the topic and introduce new concepts supported by
the notation.

Using Classes
Having defined a class we can now create instances of our Message class and manipulate them:

m1 = Message("Hello world")
m2 = Message("So long, it was short but sweet")

note = [m1, m2] # put the objects in a list

for msg in note:
msg.printIt() # print each message in turn

So in essence you just treat the class as if it was a standard Python data type, which was after all the
purpose of the exercise!
UML also has an icon for an object or instance. It is the same as the class icon, except we usually
leave the bottom two boxes blank. The name is made up of the object or instance name followed by
the class name with a colon in between. Thus m1:Message tells us that m1 is an instance of the
Message class.

Our message example would be drawn like this:

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Note that the List class represents the normal Python list type (as indicated by the word
builtin being within angle brackets, a construct known as a stereotype in UML). The lines with
diamonds indicate that the list contains the Message objects. The MyProg object likewise is
stereotyped as being a utility class, which means, in this case, that it does not exist as a class within
the program but is a product of the environment. ( Operating system facilities are often shown this
way, as are libraries of functions.) The solid lines from myProg to Message indicate that the
myProg "object" has an association with, or reference to, the Message objects. The arrows adjacent
to these lines indicate that the myProg "object" sends the printIt message to each of the
Message objects. In effect object messages are transmitted via associations.

What is "self"?

No, it's not a philosophical debate, it's one of the questions most often asked by new Python OOP
programmers. Every method definition in a class in Python starts with a parameter called self. The
actual name self is just a convention, but like many programming conventions consistency is good
so let's stick with it! (As you'll see later JavaScript has a similar concept but uses the name
this instead.)

So what is self all about? Why do we need it?

Basically self is just a reference to the current instance. When you create an instance of the class the
instance contains its own data (as created by the constructor) but not of the methods. Thus when we
send a message to an instance and it calls the corresponding method, it does so via an internal
reference to the class. It passes a reference to itself (self!) to the method so that the class code knows
which instance to use.

Let's look at a relatively familiar example. Consider a GUI application which has lots of Button
objects. When a user presses a button the method associated with a button press is activated - but
how does the Button method know which of the buttons has been pressed? The answer is by referring
to the self value which will be a reference to the actual button instance that was pressed. We'll see this
in practice when we get to the GUI topic a little later.

So what happens when a message is sent to an object? It works like this:

the client code calls the instance (sending the message in OOP speak).
The instance calls the class method, passing a reference to itself (self).
The class method then uses the passed reference to pick up the instance data for the receiving
object.

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You can see this in action in this code sequence, notice that we can explicitly call the class method, as
we do in the last line:

>>> class C:
... def __init__(self, val): self.val = val
... def f(self): print "hello, my value is:", self.val
...
>>> # create two instances
>>> a = C(27)
>>> b = C(42)
>>> # first try sending messages to the instances
>>> a.f()
hello, my value is 27
>>> b.f()
hello, my value is 42
>>> # now call the method explicitly via the class
>>> C.f(a)
hello, my value is 27

So you see we can call the methods via the instance, in which case Python fills in the self parameter
for us, or explicitly via the class, in which case we need to pass the self value explicitly.

Now you might be wondering why, if Python can provide the invisible reference between the instance
and its class can't Python also magically fill in the self by itself? The answer is that Guido van Rossum
designed it this way! Many OOP languages do indeed hide the self parameter, but one of the guiding
principles of Python is that "explicit is better than implicit". You soon get used to it and after a while
not doing it seems strange.

Same thing, Different thing

What we have so far is the ability to define our own types (classes) and create instances of these and
assign them to variables. We can then pass messages to these objects which trigger the methods we
have defined. But there's one last element to this OO stuff, and in many ways it's the most important
aspect of all.

If we have two objects of different classes but which support the same set of messages but with their
own corresponding methods then we can collect these objects together and treat them identically in
our program but the objects will behave differently. This ability to behave differently to the same input
messages is known as polymorphism.

Typically this could be used to get a number of different graphics objects to draw themselves on
receipt of a 'paint' message. A circle draws a very different shape from a triangle but provided they
both have a paint method we, as programmers, can ignore the difference and just think of them as
'shapes'.

Let's look at an example, where instead of drawing shapes we calculate their areas:

First we create Square and Circle classes:

class Square:
def __init__(self, side):
self.side = side
def calculateArea(self):
return self.side**2

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class Circle:
def __init__(self, radius):
self.radius = radius
def calculateArea(self):
import math
return math.pi*(self.radius**2)

Now we can create a list of shapes (either circles or squares) and then print out their areas:

shapes = [Circle(5),Circle(7),Square(9),Circle(3),Square(12)]

for item in shapes:

print "The area is: ", item.calculateArea()

Now if we combine these ideas with modules we get a very powerful mechanism for reusing code. Put
the class definitions in a module - say 'shapes.py' and then simply import that module when we want to
manipulate shapes. This is exactly what has been done with many of the standard Python modules,
which is why accessing methods of an object looks a lot like using functions in a module.

Here we see a more complex object diagram. Notice that in this case the objects within the list do not
have names because we did not explicitly create variables for them. In this case we just show a blank
before the colon and class name. However, the diagram is starting to get very busy. For this reason
we only draw object diagrams when necessary to illustrate some unusual feature of the design.
Instead we use more sophisticated features of class diagrams to show the relationships, as we'll see in
the examples below.

Inheritance
Inheritance is often used as a mechanism to implement polymorphism. Indeed in many OO languages
it is the only way to implement polymorphism. It works as follows:

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A class can inherit both attributes and operations from a parent or super class. This means that a new
class which is identical to another class in most respects does not need to re-implement all the
methods of the existing class, rather it can inherit those capabilities and then override those that it
wants to do differently (like the calculateArea method in the case above)

Again an example might illustrate this best. We will use a class hierarchy of bank accounts where we
can deposit cash, obtain the balance and make a withdrawal. Some of the accounts provide interest
(which, for our purposes, we'll assume is calculated on every deposit - an interesting innovation to the
banking world!) and others charge fees for withdrawals.

The BankAccount class

Let's see how that might look. First let's consider the attributes and operations of a bank account at
the most general (or abstract) level.

It's usually best to consider the operations first then provide attributes as needed to support these
operations. So for a bank account we can:
Deposit cash,
Withdraw cash,
Check current balance and
Transfer funds to another account.

To support these operations we will need a bank account ID (for the transfer operation) and the
current balance. In this example we will just use the variable to which we assign the object, but in a
more general case we would likely create an ID attribute which stored a unique reference. We will
also need to store the balance.

In UML that would look like:

We can now create a class to support that:

# first create a custom exception class

class BalanceError(Exception):
value = "Sorry you only have $%6.2f in your account"

class BankAccount:
def __init__(self, initialAmount):
self.balance = initialAmount
print( "Account created with balance %5.2f" % self.balance )

def deposit(self, amount):

self.balance = self.balance + amount

def withdraw(self, amount):

if self.balance >= amount:
self.balance = self.balance - amount
else:
raise BalanceError( BalanceError.value % self.balance )

def checkBalance(self):
return self.balance

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def transfer(self, amount, account):

try:
self.withdraw(amount)
account.deposit(amount)
except BalanceError:
print( BalanceError.value % self.balance )

Note 1: We check the balance before withdrawing and also use an exception to handle errors. Of
course there is no Python error type BalanceError so we needed to create one of our own - it's
simply an subclass of the standard Exception class with a string value. The string value is defined
as an attribute of the exception class purely as a convenience, it ensures that we can generate standard
error messages every time we raise an error. When we raise BalanceError we pass the internal
format string value filled in with the current value of the object's balance. Notice that we didn't use
self when defining the value in BalanceError, that's because value is a shared attribute across all
instances, it is defined at the class level and known as a class variable. We access it by using the class
name followed by a dot: BalanceError.value as seen above. Now, when the error generates its
traceback it concludes by printing out the formatted error string showing the current balance.

Note 2: The transfer method uses the BankAccount's withdraw/deposit member

functions or methods to do the transfer. This is very common in OO and is known as self messaging.
It means that derived classes can implement their own versions of deposit/withdraw but the
transfer method can remain the same for all account types.

OK, now that we have defined our BankAccount as a base class we can get back to inheritance
which is what we are supposed to be discussing! Let's look at our first sub class>.

The InterestAccount class

Now we use inheritance to provide an account that adds interest (we'll assume a default of 3%) on
every deposit. It will be identical to the standard BankAccount class except for the deposit method
and the initialisation of the interest rate. So we simply override those:

class InterestAccount(BankAccount):
def __init__(self, initialAmount, interest=0.03):
BankAccount.__init__(self, initialAmount)
self.interest = interest
def deposit(self, amount):
BankAccount.deposit(self,amount)
self.balance = self.balance * (1 + self.interest)

Note that we call the BankAccount initialisation method at the beginning of __init__() which
takes care of all the initialisation of the super class for us, we just need to initialise the new
interest attribute that we introduced here. Because we call it via the class (see the discussion of
"self" above) we need to explicitly include self as an argument.

And that's it. We begin to see the power of OOP, all the other methods have been inherited from
BankAccount (by putting BankAccount inside the parentheses after the new class name). Notice
that once again deposit called the superclass's deposit method rather than copying the code. Now
if we modify the BankAccount deposit to include some kind of error checking the sub-class will gain
those changes automatically.

The ChargingAccount class

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This account is again identical to a standard BankAccount class except that this time it charges a
default fee of $3 for every withdrawal. As for the InterestAccount we can create a class inheriting
from BankAccount and modifying the init and withdraw methods.

class ChargingAccount(BankAccount):
def __init__(self, initialAmount, fee=3):
BankAccount.__init__(self, initialAmount)
self.fee = fee

def withdraw(self, amount):

BankAccount.withdraw(self, amount+self.fee)

Note 1: We store the fee as an instance variable so that we can change it later if necessary. Notice
that we again call the inherited __init__ just like any other method.

Note 2: We simply add the fee to the requested withdrawal and call the
BankAccount.withdraw method to do the real work.

Note 3: We introduce a side effect here in that a charge is automatically levied on transfers too, but
that's probably what we want, so is OK.

In UML we represent inheritance with a solid arrow pointing from the sub class to the superclass.
We can now represent our bank account heirarchy like this:

Notice we only list the methods and attributes that have changed or been added in sub classes.

Testing our system

To check that it all works try executing the following piece of code (either at the Python prompt or by
creating a separate test file).

from bankaccount import *

# First a standard BankAccount

a = BankAccount(500)
b = BankAccount(200)
a.withdraw(100)
# a.withdraw(1000)

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a.transfer(100,b)
print( "A = ", a.checkBalance() )
print( "B = ", b.checkBalance() )

# Now an InterestAccount
c = InterestAccount(1000)
c.deposit(100)
print( "C = ", c.checkBalance() )

# Then a ChargingAccount
d = ChargingAccount(300)
d.deposit(200)
print( "D = ", d.checkBalance() )
d.withdraw(50)
print( "D = ", d.checkBalance() )
d.transfer(100,a)
print( "A = ", a.checkBalance() )
print( "D = ", d.checkBalance() )

# Finally transfer from charging account to the interest one

# The charging one should charge and the interest one add
# interest
print( "C = ", c.checkBalance() )
print( "D = ", d.checkBalance() )
d.transfer(20,c)
print( "C = ", c.checkBalance() )
print( "D = ", d.checkBalance() )

Now uncomment the line a.withdraw(1000) to see the exception at work.

That's it. A reasonably straightforward example but it shows how inheritance can be used to quickly
extend a basic framework with powerful new features.

We've seen how we can build up the example in stages and how we can put together a test program to
check it works. Our tests were not complete in that we didn't cover every case and there are more
checks we could have included - like what to do if an account is created with a negative amount...

Test Driven Development

Many professional programmers use a technique known as Test Driven Development (TDD) in
which they write their tests before they write their code. This may initially sound bizarre but it allows
them to test their code repeatedly as they develop it and move from a state where every test fails to
one where every test passes. At that point their program should work properly!

So popular is this that special tools have been developed to assist with this approach. Python has
several such tools including the unittest module that is in the standard library. TDD is a good
approach when writing serious code however in the context of a tutorial it would simply hide the
main code that we are trying to study amongst a mass of test cases so I won't be using it here. But its
a concept you might like to investigate once you start writing longer programs.

Collections of Objects
One problem that might have occurred to you is how we deal with lots of objects. Or how to manage
objects which we create at runtime. It's all very well creating bank accounts statically as we did above:

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acc1 = BankAccount(...)
acc2 = BankAccount(...)
acc3 = BankAccount(...)
etc...

But in the real world we don't know in advance how many accounts we need to create. How do we
deal with this? Lets consider the problem in more detail:

We need some kind of 'database' that allows us to find a given bank account by its owners name (or
more likely their bank account number - since one person can have many accounts and several persons
can have the same name...)

Finding something in a collection given a unique key....hmmm, sounds like a dictionary! Let's see how
we'd use a Python dictionary to hold dynamically created objects:

from bankaccount import BankAccount

import time

# Create new function to generate unique id numbers

def getNextID():
ok = input("Create account[y/n]? ")
if ok[0] in 'yY': # check valid input
id = time.time() # use current time as basis of ID
id = int(id) % 10000 # convert to int and shorten to 4 digits
else: id = -1 # which will stop the loop
return id

# Let's create some accounts and store them in a dictionary

accountData = {} # new dictionary
while True: # loop forever
id = getNextID()
if id == -1:
break # break forces an exit from the while loop
bal = float(input("Opening Balance? ")) # convert string to float
accountData[id] = BankAccount(bal) # use id to create new dictionary entry
print( "New account created, Number: %04d, Balance %0.2f" % (id, bal) )

# Now let's access the accounts

for id in accountData.keys():
print( "%04d\t%0.2f" % (id, accountData[id].checkBalance()) )

# and find a particular one

# Enter non-number to force exception and end program
while True:
id = int(input("Which account number? "))
if id in accountData.keys():
print( "Balance = %0.2d" % accountData[id].checkBalance() )
else: print( "Invalid ID" )

Of course the key you use for the dictionary can be anything that uniquely identifies the object, it
could be one of its attributes, like balance say (except that balance would not be a very good unique
key!). Anything at all that is unique. You might find it worthwhile going back to the raw
materials chapter and reading the dictionary section again, they really are very useful containers.

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We can represent that graphically in UML using a class diagram. The dictionary is shown as a class
which has a relationship with many BankAccounts. This is shown by the asterisk on the line
connecting the classes. An asterisk is used because that is the symbol used in regular expressions to
indicate zero or more items. This is known as the cardinality of the relationship and can be shown in
a number of ways but the regular expression numeric ranges are quite commonly used because of
their richness and flexibility.

Notice the use of a stereotype on the Dictonary to show it is a built-in class. Notice also the box
attached to the association showing that the key is the ID value. If we had been using a simple list we
would not have had the box and the line would have directly connected the two classes. This use of
class relationships and cardinality is how we avoid the need for very large complex Object diagrams.
We can focus on the abstract relationships between classes rather than the myriad of physical
relationships between individual instances.

Saving Your Objects

One snag with all of this is that you lose your data when the program ends. You need some way of
saving objects too. As you get more advanced you will learn how to use databases to do that but we
will look at using a simple text file to save and retrieve objects. (If you are using Python there are a
couple of modules called Pickle and Shelve) that do this much more effectively but as usual I'll try to
show you the generic way to do it that will work in any language. Incidentally the technical term for
the ability to save and restore objects is Persistence.

The generic way to do this is to create save and restore methods at the highest level object and
override in each class, such that they call the inherited version and then add their locally defined
attributes:

class A:
def __init__(self,x,y):
self.x = x
self.y = y

def save(self,fn):
f = open(fn,"w")
f.write(str(self.x)+ '\n') # convert to a string and add newline
f.write(str(self.y)+'\n')
return f # for child objects to use

def restore(self, fn):

f = open(fn)
self.x = int(f.readline()) # convert back to original type
self.y = int(f.readline())
return f

class B(A):
def __init__(self,x,y,z):
A.__init__(self,x,y)
self.z = z

def save(self,fn):
f = A.save(self,fn) # call parent save
f.write(str(self.z)+'\n')

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return f # in case further children exist

def restore(self, fn):

f = A.restore(self,fn)
self.z = int(f.readline())
return f

# create instances
a = A(1,2)
b = B(3,4,5)

# save the instances

a.save('a.txt').close() # remember to close the file
b.save('b.txt').close()

# retrieve instances
newA = A(5,6)
newA.restore('a.txt').close() # remember to close the file
newB = B(7,8,9)
newB.restore('b.txt').close()
print( "A: ",newA.x,newA.y )
print( "B: ",newB.x,newB.y,newB.z )

Note: The values printed out are the restored values not the ones we used to create the instances.

The key thing is to override the save/restore methods in each class and to call the parent method as
the first step. Then in the child class only deal with child class attributes. Obviously how you turn an
attribute into a string and save it is up to you the programmer but it must be output on a single line.
When restoring you simply reverse the storing process.

One big snag with this approach is that you need to create a separate file for each object. In a real
world example that could mean thousands of very small files. This quickly gets cumbersome and so
using a database to store the objects becomes necessary. We will look at how to do that in a later
topic, but the basic principles remain the same.

Mixing Classes and Modules

Modules and classes both provide mechanisms for controlling the complexity of a program. It seems
reasonable that as programs get bigger we would want to combine these features by putting classes
into modules. Some authorities recommend putting each class into a separate module but I find this
simply creates an explosion of modules and increases rather than decreases complexity. Instead I
group classes together and put the group into a module. Thus in our example above I might put all the
bank account class definitions in one module, bankaccount, say, and then create a separate module
for the application code that uses the module.
We can represent that graphically in UML in two ways. The logical grouping of the classes can be
represented using a Package or we can represent the physical file as a component. The icons for
these are shown below:

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The intention is that the Package icon should look somewhat like a folder in a typical file explorer
tool. The little icon at top right in the component icon is actually the old UML symbol for a
component but this was a bit cumbersome in diagrams when trying to draw lines showing
relationships between components so they demoted it to a small embellishment in UML 2.0

That's all the UML I'll be covering, if you find it interesting and a useful way to visualise your design
then a Google search will throw up lots of references and tutorials and you will find some UML
drawing tools too, although the shapes are sufficiently easy to draw that you can use just about any
vector graphics package.

A simplified representation of that design would be:

# File: bankaccount.py
#
# Implements a set of bank account classes
###################

class BankAccount: ....

class InterestAccount: ...

class ChargingAccount: ...

And then to use it:

import bankaccount

newAccount = bankaccount.BankAccount(50)
newChrgAcct = bankaccount.ChargingAccount(200)

# now do stuff

But what happens when we have two classes in different modules that need to access each others
details? The simplest way is to import both modules, create local instances of the classes we need and
pass the instances of one class to the other instance's methods. Passing whole objects around is what
makes it object oriented programming. You don't need to extract the attributes out of one object and
pass them into another, just pass the entire object. Now if the receiving object uses a polymorphic
message to get at the information it needs then the method will work with any kind of object that
supports the message.

Let's make that more concrete by looking at an example. Let's create a short module called
logger that contains two classes. The first class, called Logger, logs activity in a file. This logger
will have a single method log() which takes a "loggable object" as a parameter. The other class in
our module is a Loggable class that can be inherited by other classes to work with the logger. It
looks like this:

# File: logger.py
#
# Create Loggable and Logger classes for logging activities
# of objects

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############

class Loggable:
def activity(self):
return "This needs to be overridden locally"

class Logger:
def __init__(self, logfilename = "logger.dat"):
self._log = open(logfilename,"a")

def log(self, loggedObj):

self._log.write(loggedObj.activity() + '\n')

def __del__(self):
self._log.close()

Note that we have provided a destructor method ( __del__) to close the file when the logger object is
deleted or garbage collected. This is another "magic method" in Python (as shown by the double '_'
characters) similar in many ways to __init__()

Also notice that we've called the log attribute _log with a '_' character in front of the name. This is
another common naming convention in Python, like using capitalized words for class names. A single
underscore indicates that the attribute is not intended to be accessed directly, but only via the methods
of the class.

Now before we can use our module we will create a new module which defines loggable versions of
our bank account classes:

# File: loggablebankaccount.py
#
# Extend Bank account classes to work with logger module.
###############################

import bankaccount, logger

class LoggableBankAccount(bankaccount.BankAccount, logger.Loggable):

def activity(self):
return "Account balance = %d" % self.checkBalance()

class LoggableInterestAccount(bankaccount.InterestAccount,
logger.Loggable):
def activity(self):
return "Account balance = %d" % self.checkBalance()

class LoggableChargingAccount(bankaccount.ChargingAccount,
logger.Loggable):
def activity(self):
return "Account balance = %d" % self.checkBalance()

Notice we are using a feature called multiple inheritance, where we inherit not one but two parent
classes. This isn't strictly needed in Python since we could just have added an activity() method to
our original classes and achieved the same effect but in statically typed OOP languages such as Java
or C++ this technique would be necessary so I will show you the technique here for future reference.

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The sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed that the activity() method in all three classes is
identical. That means we could save ourselves some typing by creating an intermediate type of
loggable account class that inherits Loggable and only has an activity method. We can then create our
three different loggable account types by inheriting from that new class as well as from the vanilla
Loggable class. Like this:

class LoggableAccount(logger.Loggable):
def activity(self):
return "Account balance = %d" % self.checkBalance()

class LoggableBankAccount(bankaccount.BankAccount, LoggableAccount):

pass

class LoggableInterestAccount(bankaccount.InterestAccount, LoggableAccount):

pass

class LoggableChargingAccount(bankaccount.ChargingAccount, LoggableAccount):

pass

It doesn't save a lot of code but it does mean we only have one method definition to test and maintain
instead of three identical methods. This type of programming, where we introduce a superclass with
shared functionality is sometimes called mixin programming and the minimal class is called a mixin
class. It is a common outcome of this style that the final class definitions have little or no body but a
long list of inherited classes, just as we see here. It's also quite common that mixin classes do not
themselves inherit from anything, although in this case we did. In essence it's just a way of adding a
common method (or set of methods) to a class or set of classes via the power of inheritance. (The
term mixin originates in the world of ice cream parlours where different flavours of ice cream are
added (or mixed in) to vanilla to produce a new flavour. The first language to support this style was
called Flavors which was a popular dialect of Lisp for a while.)

Now we come to the point of this exercise which is to show our application code creating a logger
object and some bank accounts and passing the accounts to the logger, even though they are all
defined in different modules!

# Test logging and loggable bank accounts.

#############

import logger
import loggablebankaccount as lba

log = logger.Logger()

ba = lba.LoggableBankAccount(100)
ba.deposit(700)
log.log(ba)

intacc = lba.LoggableInterestAccount(200)
intacc.deposit(500)
log.log(intacc)

Note the use of the as keyword to create a shortcut name when importing loggablebankaccount

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Note also that once we have created the local instances we no longer need to use the module prefix
and because there is no direct access from one object to the other, it is all via messages, there is no
need for the two class definition modules to directly refer to each other either. Finally notice also that
the Logger works with instances of both LoggableBankAccount and
LoggableInterestAccount because they both support the Loggable interface. Compatibility of
object interfaces via polymorphism is the foundation upon which all OOP programs are built.

I should point out that a much more sophisticated logging system is included in the standard library
logging module, this one was purely to demonstrate some techniques. If you want logging facilities
in your own programmes investigate the standard logging module first of all.

Hopefully this has given you a taste of Object Oriented Programming and you can move on to some
of the other online tutorials, or read one of the books mentioned at the beginning for more
information and examples. Now we will briefly look at how OOP is done in VBScript and JavaScript.

OOP in VBScript
VBScript supports the concept of objects and allows us to define classes and create instances,
however it does not support the concepts of inheritance or polymorphism. VBScript is therefore what
is known as Object Based rather than fully Object Oriented. Nonetheless the concepts of combining
data and function in a single object remain useful, and a limited form of inheritance is possible using a
technique called delegation which we discuss below.

Defining classes

A class is defined in VBScript using the Class statement, like this:

<script type=text/VBScript>
Class MyClass
Private anAttribute
Public Sub aMethodWithNoReturnValue()
MsgBox "MyClass.aMethodWithNoReturnValue"
End Sub
Public Function aMethodWithReturnValue()
MsgBox "MyClass.aMethodWithReturnValue"
aMethodWithReturnValue = 42
End Function
End Class
</script>

This defines a new class called MyClass with an attribute called anAttribute which is only visible
to the methods inside the class, as indicated by the keyword Private. It is conventional to declare
data attributes to be Private and most methods to be Public. This is known as data hiding and has
the advantage of allowing us to control access to the data by forcing methods to be used and the
methods can do data quality checks on the values being passed in and out of the object. Python
provides its own mechanism for achieving this but it is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Creating Instances

We create instances in VBScript with a combination of the Set and New keywords. The variable to
which the new instance is assigned must also have been declared with the Dim keyword as is the usual
VBScript style.

<script type=text/VBScript>

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Dim anInstance
Set anInstance = New MyClass
</script>

This creates an instance of the class declared in the previous section and assigns it to the
anInstance variable.

Sending Messages

Messages are sent to instances using the same dot notation used by Python.

<script type=text/VBScript>
Dim aValue
anInstance.aMethodWithNoReturnValue()
aValue = anInstance.aMethodWithReturnValue()
MsgBox "aValue = " & aValue
</script>

The two methods declared in the class definition are called, in the first case there is no return value, in
the second we assign the return to the variable aValue. There is nothing unusual here apart from the
fact that the subroutine and function are preceded by the instance name.

Inheritance and Polymorphism

VBScript as a language does not provide any inheritance mechanism nor any mechanism for
polymorphism. However we can fake it to some degree by using a technique called delegation. This
simply means that we define an attribute of the sub class to be an instance of the theoretical parent
class. We then define a method for all of the "inherited" methods which simply calls (or delegates to),
in turn, the method of the parent instance. Let's subclass MyClass as defined above:

<script type=text/VBScript>
Class SubClass
Private parent
Private Sub Class_Initialize()
Set parent = New MyClass
End Sub
Public Sub aMethodWithNoReturnValue()
parent.aMethodWithNoREturnVAlue
End Sub
Public Function aMethodWithReturnValue()
aMethodWithReturnValue = parent.aMethodWithReturnValue
End Function
Public Sub aNewMethod
MsgBox "This is unique to the sub class"
End Sub
End Class

Dim inst,aValue
Set inst = New SubClass
inst.aMethodWithNoReturnVAlue
aValue = inst.aMethodWithReturnValue
inst.aNewMethod
MsgBox "aValue = " & CStr(aValue)
</script>

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The key points to note here are the use of the private attribute parent and the special, private
method Class_Initialise. The former is the superclass delegate attribute and the latter is the
equivalent of Pythons __init__ method for initializing instances when they are created, it is the
VBScript constructor in other words.

OOP in JavaScript
JavaScript supports objects using a technique called prototyping. This means that there is no explicit
class construct in JavaScript and instead we can define a class in terms of a set of functions or a
dictionary like concept known as an initializer.

Defining classes

The most common way to define a JavaScript "class" is to create a function with the same name as the
class, effectively this is the constructor, but is not contained within any other construct. It looks like
this:

<script type=text/JavaScript>
function MyClass(theAttribute)
{
this.anAttribute = theAttribute;
};
</script>

You might notice the keyword this which is used in the same way as Python's self as a placeholder
reference to the current instance.

We can add new attributes to the class later using the built in prototype attribute like this:

<script type=text/JavaScript>
MyClass.prototype.newAttribute = null;
</script>

This defines a new attribute of MyClass called newAttribute.

Methods are added by defining a normal function then assigning the function name to a new attribute
with the name of the method. Normally the method and function have the same name, but there is
nothing to stop you calling the methods something different, as illustrated below:

<script type=text/JavaScript>
function oneMethod(){
return this.anAttribute;
}
MyClass.prototype.getAttribute = oneMethod;
function printIt(){
document.write(this.anAttribute + "<BR>");
};
MyClass.prototype.printIt = printIt;
</script>

Of course it would be more convenient to define the functions first then finish up with the constructor
and assign the methods inside the constructor and this is in fact the normal approach, so that the full
class definition looks like this:

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<script type=text/JavaScript>
function oneMethod(){
return this.anAttribute;
};

function printIt(){
document.write(this.anAttribute + "<BR>");
};

function MyClass(theAttribute)
{
this.anAttribute = theAttribute;
this.getAttribute = oneMethod;
this.printIt = printIt;
};
</script>

Creating Instances

We create instances of classes using the keyword new, like this:

<script type=text/JavaScript>
var anInstance = new MyClass(42);
</script>

Which creates a new instance called anInstance.

Sending Messages

Sending messages in JavaScript is no different to our other languages, we use the familiar dot
notation.

<script type=text/JavaScript>
document.write("The attribute of anInstance is: <BR>");
anInstance.printIt();
</script>

Inheritance and Polymorphism

Unlike VBScript it is possible to use JavaScript's prototyping mechanism to inherit from another class.
It is rather more complex than the Python technique but is not completely unmanageable, but it is, in
my experience, a relatively uncommon technique among JavaScript programmers.

The key to inheritance in JavaScript is the prototype keyword (we used it in passing in the code
above). By using prototype we can effectively add features to an object after it has been defined.
We can see this in action here:

<script type="text/javascript">
function Message(text){
this.text = text;
this.say = function(){
document.write(this.text + '<br>');
};
};

msg1 = new Message('This is the first');

msg1.say();

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Message.prototype.shout = function(){
alert(this.text);
};

msg2 = new Message('This gets the new feature');

msg2.shout();

/* But so did msg1...*/

msg1.shout();

</script>

Note 1: We added the new alert method using prototype after creating instance msg1 of the class
but the feature was available to the existing instance as well as to the instance, msg2 created after the
addition. That is, the new feature gets added to all instances of Message both existing and new.

Note 2: We used function in a new way here. It effectively is used to create a function object which is
assigned to the object property. That is:

obj.func = function(){...};

is equivalent to saying:

function f(){....};
obj.func = f;

We will see a similar concept in Python when we get to the Functional Programming topic.

This prototyping feature gives rise to the interesting capability to change the behavior of built-in
JavaScript objects, either adding new features or changing the way existing features function! Use this
capability with great care if you don't want to spend your time grappling with really confusing bugs.

This use of prototype as a mechanism for adding functionality to existing classes has the
disadvantage that it alters the existing instance behaviors and changes the original class definition.

More conventional style inheritance is available too, as shown below:

<script type="text/javascript">
function Parent(){
this.name = 'Parent';
this.basemethod = function(){
alert('This is the parent');
};
};

function Child(){
this.parent = Parent;
this.parent();
this.submethod = function(){
alert('This from the child');
};
};

var aParent = new Parent();

var aChild = new Child();

aParent.basemethod();

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aChild.submethod();
aChild.basemethod();

</script>

The key point to note here is that the Child object has access to the basemethod without it being
explicitly granted, it has inherited it from the parent class by virtue of the assignment/call pair of lines:

this.parent = Parent;
this.parent();

within the Child class definition. And thus we have inherited the basemethod from the
Parent class!

We can, of course, use the same delegation trick we used with VBScript. Here is the VBScript
example translated into JavaScript:

<script type=text/JavaScript>
function noReturn(){
this.parent.printIt();
};

function returnValue(){
return this.parent.getAttribute();
};

function newMethod(){
document.write("This is unique to the sub class<BR>");
};

function SubClass(){
this.parent = new MyClass(27);
this.aMethodWithNoReturnValue = noReturn;
this.aMethodWithReturnValue = returnValue;
this.aNewMethod = newMethod;
};

var inst, aValue;

inst = new SubClass(); // define superclass
document.write("The sub class value is:<BR>");
inst.aMethodWithNoReturnValue();
aValue = inst.aMethodWithReturnValue();
inst.aNewMethod();
document.write("aValue = " + aValue);
</script>

We will see classes and objects being used in the following topics and case studies. It is not always
obvious to a beginner how this, apparently complex, construct can make programs easier to write and
understand but hopefully as you see classes being used in real programs it will become clearer. One
thing I would like to say is that, for very small programs they do not really help and almost certainly
will make the program longer. However as your programs start to get bigger - over about 100 lines
say - then you will find that classes and objects can help to keep things organized and even reduce the
amount of code you write.

If you are one of those who finds the whole OOP concept confusing don't panic, many people have
programmed for their whole lives without ever creating a single class! On the other hand, if you can
get to grips with objects it does open up some powerful new techniques.

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Things to Remember
Classes encapsulate data and function into a single entity.
Classes are like cookie cutters, used to create instances, or objects.
Objects communicate by sending each other messages.
When an object receives a message it executes a corresponding method.
Methods are functions stored as attributes of the class.
Classes can inherit methods and data from other classes. This makes it easy to extend the
capabilities of a class without changing the original.
Polymorphism is the ability to send the same message to several different types of object and
each behaves in its own particular way in response.
Encapsulation, Polymorphism and Inheritance are all properties of Object
Oriented programming languages.
VBScript and JavaScript are called Object Based languages because while they support
encapsulation, they do not fully support inheritance and polymorphism.

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Event Driven Programs 12/04/2010

Event Driven Programming

What will we cover?
How does an event driven program differ from a batch program?
How to write an event loop
How to use an event framework such as Tkinter

So far we have been looking at batch oriented programs. Recall that programs can be batch oriented,
whereby they start, do something then stop, or event driven where they start, wait for events and only
stop when told to do so - by an event. How do we create an event driven program? We'll look at this
in two ways - first we will simulate an event environment then we'll create a very simple GUI program
that uses the operating system and environment to generate events.

Simulating an Event Loop

Every event driven program has a loop somewhere that catches received events and processes them.
The events may be generated by the operating environment, as happens with virtually all GUI
programs or the program itself may go looking for events as is often the case in embedded control
systems such as used in cameras etc.

We will create a program that looks for precisely one type of event - keyboard input - and processes
the results until some quit event is received. In our case the quit event will be the space key. We will
process the incoming events in a very simple manner - we will simply print the ASCII code for that
key. We'll use Python for this because it has a nice, easy to use function for reading keys one at a time
- getch(). This function comes in two varieties depending on the operating system you use. If you
are using Linux it's found in the curses module, if you use Windows it's in the msvcrt module. I'll
use the Windows version first then I'll discuss the Linux option in more detail. You will need to run
these programs from an OS command prompt since any IDE, like IDLE, being a GUI, will capture the
keystrokes differently.

First we implement the event handler functions that will be called when a keypress is detected then the
main program body which simply starts up the event gathering loop and calls the appropriate event
handling function when a valid event is detected.

import msvcrt

def doKeyEvent(key):
if key == '\x00' or key == '\xe0': # non ASCII
key = msvcrt.getch() # fetch second character
print( ord(key), end='')

def doQuitEvent(key):
raise SystemExit

# First, clear the screen of clutter then warn the user

# of what to do to quit
lines = 25 # set to number of lines in console
for line in range(lines): print()

print( "Hit space to end..." )

print()

# Now mainloop runs "forever"

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while True:
ky = msvcrt.getch()
length = len(ky)
if length != 0:
# send events to event handling functions
if ky == " ": # check for quit event
doQuitEvent(ky)
else:
doKeyEvent(ky)

Notice that what we do with the events is of no interest to the main body, it simply collects the events
and passes them to the event handlers. This independence of event capture and processing is a key
feature of event driven programming.

Note: Where the key was non ASCII - a Function key for example - we needed to fetch a second
character from the keyboard, this is because these special keys actually generate pairs of bytes and
getch only retrieves one at a time. The actual value of interest is the second byte.

Linux and MacOS X programmers can't use the msvcrt library so must use another module called
curses instead. The resultant code is very similar to the windows code but there are a few
modifications required, as shown below:

import curses as c

def doKeyEvent(key):
if key == '\x00' or key == '\xe0': # non ASCII key
key = screen.getch() # fetch second character
screen.addstr(str(key)+' ') # uses global screen variable

def doQuitEvent(key):
raise SystemExit

# clear the screen of clutter, stop characters auto

# echoing to screen and then tell user what to do to quit
screen = c.initscr()
c.noecho()
screen.addstr("Hit space to end...\n")

# Now mainloop runs "forever"

while True:
ky = screen.getch()
if ky != -1:
# send events to event handling functions
if ky == ord(" "): # check for quit event
doQuitEvent(ky)
else:
doKeyEvent(ky)

c.endwin()

You'll see that the usual print commands don't work under curses and instead we have to use curses
own screen handling functions. Further, curses getch returns -1 when there is no key pressed rather
than an empty string. Aside from that the logic of the program is identical to the Windows version.

Note that the curses.endwin() should restore your screen to normal but in some cases it may not
work completely. If you wind up with an invisible cursor, no carriage return etc. You can fix it if you
exit Python with Ctrl-D and use the Linux command:

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$ stty echo -nl

Hopefully that will restore things to normal.

Note: At the time of writing I can't actually test the Linux code under Python v3 since I don't
have access to a Linux distribution with Python v3 installed. This code is copied from the
Python v2 tutorial. Hopefully it works as-is. If not you might have to do some experimentation
to get it working. If that's the case please let me know. I'll remove this caveat once I get the
chance to test the code properly.

If we were creating this as a framework for use in lots of projects we would probably include a call to
an initialization function at the start and a cleanup function at the end. The programmer could then
use the loop part and provide his own initialization, processing and cleanup functions.

That's exactly what most GUI type environments do, in that the loop part is embedded in the
operating environment or framework and applications are contractually required to provide the event
handling functions and hook these into the event loop in some way.

Let's see that in action as we explore Python's Tkinter GUI library.

A GUI program
For this exercise we'll use the Python Tkinter toolkit. This is a Python wrapper around the Tk toolkit
originally written as an extension to Tcl and also available for Perl and Ruby. The Python version is an
object oriented framework which is, in my opinion, considerably easier to work with than the original
Tk version. We will look much more closely at the principles of GUI programming in the GUI topic.

I am not going to dwell much on the GUI aspects in this topic, rather I want to focus on the style of
programming - using Tkinter to handle the event loop and leaving the programmer to create the initial
GUI and then process the events as they arrive.

In the example we create an application class KeysApp which creates the GUI in the
__init__ method and binds the space key to the doQuitEvent method. The class also defines the
required doQuitEvent method.

The GUI itself simply consists of a text entry widget whose default behavior is to echo characters
typed onto the display.

Creating an application class is quite common in OO event driven environments because there is a lot
of synergy between the concepts of events being sent to a program and messages being sent to an
object. The two concepts map on to each other very easily. An event handling function thus becomes
a method of the application class.

Having defined the class we simply create an instance of it and then send it the mainloop message.

The code looks like this:

# Use from X import * to save having to preface everything

# as tkinter.xxx
from tkinter import *
import sys

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# Create the application class which defines the GUI

# and the event handling methods
class KeysApp(Frame):
def __init__(self): # use constructor to build GUI
Frame.__init__(self)
self.txtBox = Text(self)
self.txtBox.bind("<space>", self.doQuitEvent)
self.txtBox.pack()
self.pack()

def doQuitEvent(self,event):
sys.exit()

# Now create an instance and start the event loop running

myApp = KeysApp()
myApp.mainloop()

Note: If you run this from inside IDLE you will find the program doesn't close properly but simply
prints an exit message in the shell window. Don't worry, that's just IDLE trying to be helpful. If you
run it from a command prompt everything should be just fine.

Notice that we don't even implement a key event handler! That's because the default behavior of the
Text widget is to print out the keys pressed. However that does mean our programs are not really
functionally equivalent. In the console version we printed the ASCII codes of all keys rather than only
printing the alphanumeric versions of printable keys as we do here. There's nothing to prevent us
capturing all of the keypresses and doing the same thing. To do so we would add the following line to
the __init__ method:

self.txtBox.bind("<Key>", self.doKeyEvent)

And the following method to process the event:

def doKeyEvent(self,event):
str = "%d\n" % event.keycode
self.txtBox.insert(END, str)
return "break"

Note 1: the key value is stored in the keycode field of the event. I had to look at the source code of
Tkinter.py to find that out... Recall that curiosity is a key attribute of a programmer?!

Note 2: return "break" is a magic signal to tell Tkinter not to invoke the default event processing
for that widget. Without that line, the text box displays the ASCII code followed by the actual
character typed, which is not what we want here.

That's enough on Tkinter for now. This isn't meant to be a Tkinter tutorial, that's the subject of the
next topic. There are also several books on using Tk and Tkinter.

Event Driven Programming in VBScript and JavaScript

Both VBScript and JavaScript can be used in an event driven manner when programming a web
browser. Normally when a web page containing script code is loaded the script is executed in a batch
fashion as the page loads. However if the script contains nothing but function definitions the
execution will do nothing but define the functions ready for use, but the functions will not be called

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initially. Instead, in the HTML part of the page the functions will be bound to HTML elements -
usually within a Form element - such that when events occur the functions are called. We have already
seen this in the JavaScript example of getting user input, when we read the input from an HTML
form. Let's look at that example again more closely and see how it really is an example of event driven
programming within a web page:

<script type="text/javascript">
function myProgram(){
alert("We got a value of " + document.entry.data.value);
}
</script>

<form name='entry'>
<P>Type value then click outside the field with your mouse</P>
<Input Type='text' Name='data' onChange='myProgram()'>
</form>

The script part simply defines a JavaScript function, and the definition is executed when the page
loads. The HTML code then creates a Form with an Input element. As part of the Input definition
we bind the onChange event to a short block of JavaScript which simply executes our
myProgram() event handler. Now when the user changes the content of the Input box the browser
executes our event handler. The event loop is embedded inside the browser.

VBScript can be used in exactly the same way except that the function definitions are all in VBScript
instead of JavaScript, like this:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Sub myProgram()
MsgBox "We got a value of " & Document.entry2.data.value
End Sub
</script>

<form name='entry2'>
<P>Type value then click outside the field with your mouse</P>
<Input Type='text' Name='data' onChange='myProgram()'>
</form>

Thus we can see that web browser code can be written in batch form or event driven form or a
combination of styles to suit our needs.
Things to remember
Event loops do not care about the events they detect
Event handlers handle one single event at a time
Frameworks such as Tkinter provide an event loop and often some default event handlers
too.
Web browsers provide for both batch and event driven coding styles, or even a mixture of
both.

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Introduction to GUI Programming 12/04/2010

GUI Programming with Tkinter

What will we cover?
Basic GUI building principles
Basic widgets
Simple Tkinter program structure
GUI and OOP, a perfect match
wxPython as an alternative to Tkinter

In this topic we look at how a GUI program is assembled in a general sense, then how this is done
using Python's native GUI toolkit, Tkinter. This will not be a full blown Tkinter reference nor even a
complete tutorial. There is already a very good and detailed tutor linked from the Python web site.
This tutorial will instead try to lead you through the basics of GUI programming, introducing some of
the basic GUI components and how to use them. We will also look at how Object Oriented
programming can help organize a GUI application.

GUI principles
The first thing I want to say is that you won't learn anything new about programming here.
Programming a GUI is exactly like any other kind of programming, you can use sequences, loops,
branches and modules just as before. What is different is that in programming a GUI you usually use a
Toolkit and must follow the pattern of program design laid down by the toolkit provider. Each new
toolkit will have its own API and set of design rules and you as a programmer need to learn these.
This is why most programmers try to standardize on only a few toolkits which are available across
multiple languages - learning a new toolkit tends to be much harder than learning a new programming
language!

Most windows programming languages come with a toolkit included (usually a thin veneer over the
very primitive toolkit built into the windowing system itself). Visual Basic, Delphi and Visual
C++/.NET are examples of this.

Java is different in that the language includes its own graphics toolkit (actually more than one!) which
runs on any platform that Java runs on - which is almost any platform!

There are other toolkits that you can get separately which can be used on any OS (Unix, Mac,
Windows...). These generally have adapters to allow them to be used from many different languages.
Some of these are commercial but many are freeware. Examples are: GT/K, Qt, Tk

They all have web sites. For some examples try:

wxPython, a Python version of the wxWidgets toolkit which is actually written in C++
PyQt, the Qt toolkit which has "bindings" to most languages.
pyGTK, the Gimp Toolkit, or GTk which is an opensource project used heavily in the Linux
community.

Qt and GT/k are what most Linux applications are written in and are both free for non commercial use
(i.e. where you don't sell your programs for profit). Qt can provide a commercial license too if you
want to use it for commercial purposes and GTk is licensed under the Gnu GPL which has its own
special terms.

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The standard Python graphics toolkit (i.e. it comes with the language) is Tkinter which is based on
Tk, a fairly old multi-OS toolkit. This is the toolkit we will look at most closely, versions of it are
available for Tcl, Haskell, Ruby and Perl as well as Python.

The principles in Tk are slightly different to other toolkits so I will conclude with a very brief look at
another popular GUI toolkit for Python (and C/C++) which is more conventional in its approach. But
first, some general principles:

As we have already stated several times GUI applications are nearly always event driven in nature. If
you don't remember what that means go back and look at the event driven programming topic.

I will assume that you are already familiar with GUIs as a user and will focus on how GUI programs
work from a programmer's perspective. I will not be going into details of how to write large complex
GUIs with multiple windows, MDI interfaces etc. I will stick to the basics of creating a single window
application with some labels, buttons, text boxes and message boxes.

First things first, we need to check our vocabulary. GUI programming has its own set of programming
terms. The most common terms are described in the table below:

Term Description
Window An area of the screen controlled by an application. Windows are usually rectangular but
some GUI environments permit other shapes. Windows can contain other windows and
frequently every single GUI control is treated as a window in its own right.
Control A control is a GUI object used for controlling the application. Controls have properties
and usually generate events. Normally controls correspond to application level objects and
the events are coupled to methods of the corresponding object such that when an event
occurs the object executes one of its methods. The GUI environment provides a
mechanism for binding events to methods.

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Widget A control, sometimes restricted to visible controls. Some controls (such as timers) can be
associated with a given window but are not visible. Widgets are that subset of controls
which are visible and can be manipulated by the user or programmer. The widgets that we
shall cover are:

Frame
Label
Button
Text Entry
Message box

The ones we won't discuss in this topic but are used elsewhere in the tutor are:

Text box
Radio Button

Finally, some of the ones not discussed at all are:

Canvas - for drawing

Check button - for multiple selections
Image - for displaying BMP, GIF, JPEG and PNG images
Listbox - for lists!
Menu/MenuButton - for building menus
Scale/Scrollbar - indicating position

Frame A type of widget used to group other widgets together. Often a Frame is used to represent
the complete window and further frames are embedded within it.
Layout Controls are laid out within a Frame according to a particular set of rules or guidelines.
These rules form a Layout. The Layout may be specified in a number of ways, either using
on-screen coordinates specified in pixels, using relative position to other components (left,
top etc) or using a grid or table arrangement. A coordinate system is easy to understand
but difficult to manage when a window is resized etc. Beginners are advised to use
non-resizable windows if working with coordinate based layouts.
Child GUI applications tend to consist of a hierarchy of widgets/controls. The top level Frame
comprising the application window will contain sub frames which in turn contain still more
frames or controls. These controls can be visualized as a tree structure with each control
having a single parent and a number of children. In fact it is normal for this structure to be
stored explicitly by the widgets so that the programmer, or more commonly the GUI
environment itself, can often perform some common action to a control and all of its
children. For example, closing the topmost widget results in all of the child widgets being
closed too.

The Containment tree

One very important principle to grasp in GUI programming is the idea of a containment hierarchy.
That is, the widgets are contained in a tree like structure with a top level widget controlling the entire
interface. It has various child widgets which in turn may have children of their own. Events arrive at a
child widget and if it is unable to handle it it will pass the event to its parent and so on up to the top
level. Similarly if a command is given to draw a widget it will send the command on down to its
children, thus a draw command to the top level widget will redraw the entire application whereas one
sent to a button will likely only redraw the button itself.

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This concept of events percolating up the tree and commands being pushed down is fundamental to
understanding how GUIs operate at the programmer level. It is also the reason that you always need
to specify a widget's parent when creating it, so that it knows where it sits in the containment tree. We
can draw the containment tree for a simple application that we will create later in this topic like this:
,

This illustrates the top level widget containing a single Frame which represents the outermost
window border. This in turn contains two more Frames, the first of which contains a Text
Entry widget and the second contains the two Buttons used to control the application. We will
refer back to this diagram later in the topic when we come to build the GUI.

A Tour of Some Common Widgets

In this section we will use the Python interactive prompt to create some simple windows and widgets.
Note that because IDLE is itself a Tkinter application you cannot reliably run Tkinter applications
within IDLE. You can of course create the files using IDLE as an editor but you must run them from
a OS command prompt. Pythonwin users can run Tkinter applications since Pythonwin is built using
windows own GUI toolkit, MFC. However even within Pythonwin there are certain unexpected
behaviors with Tkinter application. As a result I will use the raw Python prompt from the Operating
System.

>>> from tkinter import *

This is the first requirement of any Tkinter program - import the names of the widgets. You could of
course just import the module but it quickly gets tiring typing tkinter in front of every component
name.

>>> top = Tk()

This creates the top level widget in our widget hierarchy. All other widgets will be created as children
of this.

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What happened at this point will depend on where you are typing the program. If, like me, you are
using Python from an OS prompt you will have seen that a new blank window has appeared complete
with an empty title bar save for a Tk logo as icon and the usual set of control buttons (iconify,
maximize etc). If you are using an IDE you may not see anything yet, it will onoly appear when we
complete the GUI and start the main event loop running.

We will now add components to this window as we build an application.

>>> dir(top)
[....lots of stuff!...]

The dir() function shows us what names are known to the argument. You can use it on modules but
in this case we are looking at the internals of the top object, an instance of the Tk class. These are the
attributes of top, and there are a lot of them! Take a look, in particular, for the children and
master attributes which are the links to the widget containment tree. Note also the attribute
_tclCommands, this is because, as you might recall, Tkinter is built on a Tcl toolkit called Tk.

>>> F = Frame(top)

Create a Frame widget which will in turn contain the child controls/widgets that we use.
Frame specifies top as its first (and in this case only) parameter thus signifying that F will be a child
widget of top.

>>> F.pack()

Notice that the Tk window (if it's visible) has now shrunk to the size of the added Frame widget -
which is currently empty so the window is now very small! The pack() method invokes a Layout
Manager known as the packer which is very easy to use for simple layouts but becomes a little clumsy
as the layouts get more complex. We will stick with it for now because it is easy to use. Note that
widgets will not be visible in our application until we pack them (or use another Layout manager
method). We will talk a lot more about Layout Managers later on, after we complete this short
program.

>>> lHello = Label(F, text="Hello world")

Here we create a new object, lHello, an instance of the Label class, with a parent widget F and a
text attribute of "Hello world". Notice that because Tkinter object constructors tend to have many
parameters (each with default values) it is usual to use the named parameter technique of passing
arguments to Tkinter objects. Also notice that the object is not yet visible because we haven't packed
it yet.

One final point to note is the use of a naming convention: I put a lowercasel, for Label, in front of a
name, Hello, which reminds me of its purpose. Like most naming conventions this is a matter of
personal choice, but I find it helps.

>>> lHello.pack()

Now we can see it. Hopefully yours looks quite a lot like this:

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We can specify other properties of the Label such as the font and color using parameters to the object
constructor too. We can also access the corresponding properties using the configure method of
Tkinter widgets, like so:

>>> lHello.configure(text="Goodbye")

The message changed. That was easy, wasn't it? configure is an especially good technique if you
need to change multiple properties at once because they can all be passed as arguments. However if
you only want to change a single property at a time, as we did above you can treat the object like a
dictionary, thus:

>>> lHello['text'] = "Hello again"

which is shorter and arguably easier to understand.

Labels are pretty boring widgets, they can only display read-only text, albeit in various colors, fonts
and sizes. (In fact they can be used to display simple graphics too but we won't bother with that here).

Before we look at another object type there is one more thing to do and that's to set the title of the
window. We do that by using a method of the top level widget top:

>>> F.master.title("Hello")

We could have used top directly but, as we'll see later, access through the Frame's master property is
a useful technique.

>>> bQuit = Button(F, text="Quit", command=F.quit)

Here we create a new widget - a button. The button has a label "Quit" and is associated with the
command F.quit. Note that we pass the method name, we do not call the method by adding
parentheses after it. This means we must pass a function object in Python terms, it can be a built-in
method provided by Tkinter, as here, or any other function that we define. The function or method
must take no arguments. The quit method, like the pack method, is defined in a base class and is
inherited by all Tkinter widgets, but is usually called at the top window level of the application.

>>> bQuit.pack()

Once again the pack method makes the button visible.

>>> top.mainloop()

And finally we start the Tkinter event loop. Notice that the Python >>> prompt has now disappeared.
That tells us that Tkinter now has control. If you press the Quit button the prompt will return,
proving that our command option worked. Don't expect the window to close, the python interpreter is
still running and we only quit the mainloop function, the various widgets will be destroyed when
Python exits - which in real programs is usually immediately after the mainloop terminates!

Note that if running this from Pythonwin or IDLE you may not have seen anything until this point!
And you may get a slightly different result, if so try typing the commands so far into a Python script
and running them from an OS command prompt.

In fact it's probably a good time to try that anyhow, after all, it's how most Tkinter programs will be
run in practice. Use the principle commands from those we've discussed so far as shown:

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from tkinter import *

# set up the window itself

top = Tk()
F = Frame(top)
F.pack()

# add the widgets

lHello = Label(F, text="Hello")
lHello.pack()
bQuit = Button(F, text="Quit", command=F.quit)
bQuit.pack()

# set the loop running

top.mainloop()

The call to the top.mainloop method starts the Tkinter event loop generating events. In this case
the only event that we catch will be the button press event which is connected to the F.quit method.
F.quit in turn will terminate the application and this time the window will also close because Python
has also exited. Try it, it should look like this:

Notice that I missed the line that changes the window title. Try adding that line in by yourself and
check that it works as expected.

Exploring Layout
Note: from now on I'll provide examples as Python script files rather than as commands at the >>>
prompt. In most cases I'll only be providing snippets of code so you will have to put in the calls to
Tk() and the mainloop() yourself, use the previous program as a template.

In this section I want to look at how Tkinter positions widgets within a window. We already have
seen Frame, Label and Button widgets and those are all we need for this section. In the previous
example we used the pack method of the widget to locate it within its parent widget. Technically
what we are doing is invoking Tk's packer Layout Manager. (Another name for Layout Manager is
Geometry Manager.) The Layout Manager's job is to determine the best layout for the widgets based
on hints that the programmer provides, plus constraints such as the size of the window as controlled
by the user. Some Layout managers use exact locations within the window, specified in pixels
normally, and this is very common in Microsoft Windows environments such as Visual Basic. Tkinter
includes a Placer Layout Manager which can do this too via a place method. I won't look at that in
this tutor because usually one of the other, more intelligent, managers is a better choice, since they
take the need to worry about what happens when a window is resized away from us as programmers.

The simplest Layout Manager in Tkinter is the packer which we've been using. The packer, by default,
just stacks widgets one on top of the other. That is very rarely what we want for normal widgets, but
if we build our applications from Frames then stacking Frames on top of each other is quite a
reasonable approach. We can then put our other widgets into the Frames using either the packer or
other Layout Manager within each Frame as appropriate. (Each Frame can have its own Layout
Manager, but you cannot mix managers within a single frame.) You can see an example of this in
action in the Case Study topic.

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Even the simple packer provides a multitude of options, however. For example we can arrange our
widgets horizontally instead of vertically by providing a side argument, like so:

lHello.pack(side="left")
bQuit.pack(side="left")

That will force the widgets to go to the left thus the first widget (the label) will appear at the extreme
left hand side, followed by the next widget (the Button). If you modify the lines in the example above
it will look like this:

And if you change the "left" to "right" then the Label appears on the extreme right and the
Button to the left of it, like so:

One thing you notice is that it doesn't look very nice because the widgets are squashed together. The
packer also provides us with some parameters to deal with that. The easiest to use is Padding and is
specified in terms of horizontal padding (padx), and vertical padding(pady). These values are
specified in pixels. Let's try adding some horizontal padding to our example:

lHello.pack(side="left", padx=10)
bQuit.pack(side='left', padx=10)

It should look like this:

If you try resizing the window you'll see that the widgets retain their positions relative to one another
but stay centered in the window. Why is that, if we packed them to the left? The answer is that we
packed them into a Frame but the Frame was packed without a side, so it is positioned top, center -
the packers default. If you want the widgets to stay at the correct side of the window you will need to
pack the Frame to the appropriate side too:

F.pack(side='left')

Also note that the widgets stay centered if you resize the window vertically - again that's the packers
default behavior.

I'll leave you to play with padx and pady for yourself to see the effect of different values and
combinations etc. Between them, side and padx/pady allow quite a lot of flexibility in the
positioning of widgets using the packer. There are several other options, each adding another subtle
form of control, please check the Tkinter reference pages for details.

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There are a few other layout managers in Tkinter, known as the grid, and the placer. (In addition the
Tix module which augments Tkinter provides a Form layout manager. We do not cover Tix here.) To
use the grid manager you use grid() instead of pack() and for the placer you call place() instead
of pack(). Each has its own set of options and since I'll only cover the packer in this intro you'll need
to look up the Tkinter tutorial and reference for the details. The main points to note are that the grid
arranges components in a grid (surprise!) within the window - this can often be useful for dialog
boxes with lined up text entry boxes, for example. Many Tkinter users prefer the grid to the packer
but for beginners it can take a little getting used to. The placer uses either fixed coordinates in pixels
or relative coordinates within a window. The latter allow the component to resize along with the
window - always occupying 75% of the vertical space say. This can be useful for intricate window
designs but does require a lot of pre-planning - I strongly recommend a pad of squared paper, a pencil
and eraser!

Controlling Appearance using Frames and the Packer

The Frame widget actually has a few useful properties that we can use. After all, it's very well having
a logical frame around components but sometimes we want something we can see too. This is
especially useful for grouped controls like radio buttons or check boxes. The Frame solves this
problem by providing, in common with many other Tk widgets, a relief property. Relief can have any
one of several values: sunken, raised, groove, ridge or flat. Let's use the sunken value on
our simple dialog box. Simply change the Frame creation line to:
F = Frame(top, relief="sunken", border=1)

Note 1:You need to provide a border too. If you don't the Frame will be sunken but with an invisible
border - you don't see any difference!

Note 2: that you don't put the border size in quotes. This is one of the confusing aspects of Tk
programming is knowing when to use quotes around an option and when to leave them out. In
general if it's a numeric or single character value you can leave the quotes off. If it's a mixture of digits
and letters or a string then you need the quotes. Likewise with which letter case to use. Unfortunately
there is no easy solution, you just learn from experience - Python often gives a list of the valid options
in it's error messages!

One other thing to notice is that the Frame doesn't fill the window. We can fix that with another
packer option called, unsurprisingly, fill. When you pack the frame do it thusly:

F.pack(fill="x")

This fills horizontally, if you want the frame to fill the entire window just use fill='y' too. Because
this is quite a common requirement there is a special fill option called BOTH so you could type:

F.pack(fill="both")

The end result of running the script now looks like:

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Adding more widgets

Let's now look at a text Entry widget. This is the familiar single line of text input box. It shares a lot
of the methods of the more sophisticated Text widget which we used in the event handling topic and
will also use in the case study topic. Essentially we will simply use an Entry to capture what the user
types and to clear that text on demand.

Going back to our "Hello World" program we'll add a text Entry widget inside a Frame of its own and
then, in a second Frame, put a button that can clear the text that we type into the Entry. We will also
add a button to quit the application. This will demonstrate not only how to create and use the Entry
widget but also how to define our own event handling functions and connect them to widgets.

from tkinter import *

# create the event handler to clear the text

def evClear():
eHello.delete(0,END)

# create the top level window/frame

top = Tk()
F = Frame(top)
F.pack(fill="both")

# Now the frame with text entry

fEntry = Frame(F, border=1)
eHello = Entry(fEntry)
fEntry.pack(side="top")
eHello.pack(side="left")

# Finally the frame with the buttons.

# We'll sink this one for emphasis
fButtons = Frame(F, relief="sunken", border=1)
bClear = Button(fButtons, text="Clear Text", command=evClear)
bClear.pack(side="left", padx=5, pady=2)
bQuit = Button(fButtons, text="Quit", command=F.quit)
bQuit.pack(side="left", padx=5, pady=2)
fButtons.pack(side="top", fill="x")

# Now run the eventloop

F.mainloop()

Note again that we pass the name of the event handlers (evClear and F.quit), without parentheses,
as the command argument to the buttons. Note also the use of a naming convention, evXXX to link
the event handler with the corresponding widget.

Running the program yields this:

And if you type something in the text entry box then hit the "Clear Text" button it removes it again.

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Of course there is not much point in having an Entry widget unless we can get access to the text
contained within it. We do this using the get method of the widget. I'll illustrate that by copying the
text from the widget to a label just before clearing it so that we can always see the last text that the
widget held. To do that we need to add a Label widget just under the Entry widget and extend the
evClear event handler to copy the text. And just for fun we will colour the label text a light blue. The
modified program is shown below with the modifications in bold:

from tkinter import *

# create the event handler to clear the text

def evClear():
lHistory['text'] = eHello.get()
eHello.delete(0,END)

# create the top level window/frame

top = Tk()
F = Frame(top)
F.pack(fill="both")

# Now the frame with text entry

fEntry = Frame(F, border=1)
eHello = Entry(fEntry)
eHello.pack(side="left")
lHistory = Label(fEntry, foreground="steelblue")
lHistory.pack(side="bottom", fill="x")
fEntry.pack(side="top")

# Finally the frame with the buttons.

# We'll sink this one for emphasis
fButtons = Frame(F, relief="sunken", border=1)
bClear = Button(fButtons, text="Clear Text", command=evClear)
bClear.pack(side="left", padx=5, pady=2)
bQuit = Button(fButtons, text="Quit", command=F.quit)
bQuit.pack(side="left", padx=5, pady=2)
fButtons.pack(side="top", fill="x")

# Now run the eventloop

F.mainloop()

Notice that while we have here assigned the text directly to the Label property but we could equally
well have assigned it to a normal Python variable for use later in our program.

You might recall that back in the Talking to the User topic we discussed the EasyGUI module and its
basic data entry dialog box? You can probably begin to see how such a dialog box can be created.
Unfortunately there are a couple of extra bits of information we need before we are ready to do that.

Binding events - from widgets to code

Up till now we have used the command property of buttons to associate Python functions with GUI
events. Sometimes we want more explicit control, for example to catch a particular key combination.
The way to do that is use the bind function to explicitly tie together (or bind) an event and a Python
function.

We'll now define a hot key - let's say CTRL-c - to delete the text in the above example. To do that we
need to bind the CTRL-C key combination to the same event handler as the Clear button.
Unfortunately there's an unexpected snag. When we use the command option the function specified

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must take no arguments. When we use the bind function to do the same job the bound function must
take one argument. Thus we need to create a new function with a single parameter which calls
evClear. Add the following after the evClear definition:

def evHotKey(event):
evClear()

And add the following line following the definition of the eHello Entry widget:

eHello.bind("<Control-c>",evHotKey) # the key definition is case sensitive

Run the program again and you can now clear the text by either hitting the button or typing Ctrl-c.
We could also use bind to capture things like mouse clicks or capturing or losing focus (that is,
making the window active or inactive) or even the window becoming visible (or hidden). See the
Tkinter documentation for more information on this. The hardest part is usually figuring out the
format of the event description!

A Short Message
You can report short messages to your users using a MessageBox. This is very easy in Tk and is
accomplished using the tkMessageBox module functions as shown:

import tkMessageBox
tkMessageBox.showinfo("Window Text", "A short message")

There are also error, warning, Yes/No and OK/Cancel boxes available via different
showXXX functions. They are distinguished by different icons and buttons. The latter two use
askXXX instead of showXXX and return a value to indicate which button the user pressed, like so:

res = tkMessageBox.askokcancel("Which?", "Ready to stop?")

print res

Here are some of the Tkinter message boxes:

There are also standard dialog boxes that you can use to get filenames or directory names from the
user that look just like the normal GUI "Open File" or "Save File" dialogs. I won't describe them here
but you will find examples in the Tkinter reference pages under Standard Dialogs. You will notice
there that there are direct equivalents to the EasyGui dialogs available within Tkinter, so you only
really need to use EasyGUI when working in a command line environment and want to give a bit of
GUI like polish to your program.

Wrapping Applications as Objects

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It's common when programming GUI's to wrap the entire application as a class. This begs the
question, how do we fit the widgets of a Tkinter application into this class structure? There are two
choices, we either decide to make the application itself as a subclass of a Tkinter Frame or have a
member field store a reference to the top level window. The latter approach is the one most
commonly used in other toolkits so that's the approach we'll use here. If you want to see the first
approach in action go back and look at the example in the Event Driven Programming topic. (That
example also illustrates the basic use of the incredibly versatile Tkinter Text widget as well as another
example of using bind)

I will convert the example above, using an Entry field, a Clear button and a Quit button, to an OO
structure. First we create an Application class and within the constructor assemble the visual parts of
the GUI.

We assign the resultant Frame to self.mainWindow, thus allowing other methods of the class
access to the top level Frame. Other widgets that we may need to access (such as the Entry field) are
likewise assigned to member variables of the application. Using this technique the event handlers
become methods of the application class and all have access to any other data members of the
application (although in this case there are none) through the self reference. This provides seamless
integration of the GUI with the underlying application objects:

from tkinter import *

# create the event handler to clear the text

class ClearApp:
def __init__(self, parent=0):
# create the top level window/frame
self.mainWindow = Frame(parent)
self.eHello = Entry(self.mainWindow)
self.eHello.insert(0,"Hello world")
self.eHello.pack(fill="x", padx=5, pady=5)
self.eHello.bind("", self.evHotKey)

# Now the frame with the buttons.

fButtons = Frame(self.mainWindow, height=2)
self.bClear = Button(fButtons, text="Clear",
width=10, height=1,command=self.evClear)
self.bQuit = Button(fButtons, text="Quit",
width=10, height=1, command=self.mainWindow.quit)
self.bClear.pack(side="left", padx=15, pady=1)
self.bQuit.pack(side="right", padx=15, pady=1)
fButtons.pack(side="top", pady=2, fill="x")
self.mainWindow.pack()
self.mainWindow.master.title("Clear Application")

def evClear(self):
self.eHello.delete(0,END)

def evHotKey(self, event):

self.evClear()

# Now create the app and run the eventloop

top = Tk()
app = ClearApp(top)
top.mainloop()

Here's the result:

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The result looks remarkably like the previous incarnation although I have tweaked some of the
configuration and pack options to look more similar to the wxPython example below.

Of course it's not just the main application that we can wrap up as an object. We could create a class
based around a Frame containing a standard set of buttons and reuse that class in building dialog
windows say. We could even create whole dialogs and use them across several projects. Or we can
extend the capabilities of the standard widgets by subclassing them - maybe to create a button that
changes colour depending on its state. This is what has been done with the Tix module which is an
extension to Tkinter which is also part of the stand library.

Since version 3.1 Tkinter also includes some new features, known as themed widgets which greatly
improve the look of Tkinter so that it is virtually indistinguishable from the native OS widgets. I won't
cover these here but you can read about them on the Tcl/Tk web site.

An alternative - wxPython
There are many other GUI toolkits available but one of the most popular is the wxPython toolkit
which is, in turn, a wrapper for the C++ toolkit wxWidgets. wxPython is much more typical than
Tkinter of GUI toolkits in general. It also provides more standard functionality than Tk "out of the
box" - things like tooltips, status bars etc which have to be hand crafted in Tkinter. We'll use
wxPython to recreate the simple "Hello World" Label and Button example above.

One major snag is that wxPython is not yet available for Python v3! It is intended to port it but
the maintainer has not, at the time of writing, done so. That means you will need to treat the v2
code below as a reading exercise only.

I won't go through this in detail, if you do want to know more about how wxPython works you will
need to download the package from the wxPython website.

In general terms the toolkit defines a framework which allows us to create windows and populate
them with controls and to bind methods to those controls. It is fully object oriented so you should use
methods rather than functions. The example looks like this:

import wx

# --- Define a custom Frame, this will become the main window ---
class HelloFrame(wx.Frame):
def __init__(self, parent, id, title, pos, size):
wx.Frame.__init__(self, parent, id, title, pos, size)
# we need a panel to get the right background
panel = wx.Panel(self)

# Now create the text and button widgets

self.tHello = wx.TextCtrl(panel, -1, "Hello world", pos=(3,3), size=(185,22)
bClear = wx.Button(panel, -1, "Clear", pos=(15, 32))
self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnClear, bClear)
bQuit = wx.Button(panel, -1, "Quit", pos=(100, 32))
self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnQuit, bQuit)

# these are our event handlers

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def OnClear(self, event):

self.tHello.Clear()

def OnQuit(self, event):

self.Destroy()

# --- Define the Application Object ---

# Note that all wxPython programs MUST define an
# application class derived from wx.App
class HelloApp(wx.App):
def OnInit(self):
frame = HelloFrame(None, -1, "Hello", (200,50), (200,90) )
frame.Show(True)
self.SetTopWindow(frame)
return True

# create instance and start the event loop

HelloApp().MainLoop()

And it looks like this:

Points to note are the use of a naming convention for the methods that get called by the framework -
OnXXXX. Also note the EVT_XXX constants used to bind events to widgets - there is a whole family of
these. wxPython has a vast array of widgets, far more than Tkinter, and with them you can build quite
sophisticated GUIs. Unfortunately they tend to use a coordinate based placement scheme which
becomes very tedious after a while. It is possible to use a scheme very similar to the Tkinter packer
but its not so well documented.

Incidentally it might be of interest to note that this and the very similar Tkinter example above have
both got about the same number of lines of executable code - Tkinter: 23, wxPython: 21.

In conclusion, if you just want a quick GUI front end to a text based tool then Tkinter should meet
your needs with minimal effort. If you want to build full featured cross platform GUI applications
look more closely at wxPython.

Other toolkits include MFC and .NET and of course there is the venerable curses which is a kind of
text based GUI! Many of the lessons we've learned with Tkinter apply to all of these toolkits but each
has its own characteristics and foibles. Pick one, get to know it and enjoy the wacky world of GUI
design. Finally I should mention that many of the toolkits do have graphical GUI builder tools, for
example Qt has Blackadder and GTK has Glade. wxPython has Python Card which tries to simplify
the whole wxPython GUI building process. There is also a free GUI builder, Boa Constructor,
available although still only in Alpha release state. There is even a GUI builder for Tkinter called
SpecTix , based on an earlier Tcl tool for building Tk interfaces, but capable of generating code in
multiple languages including Python. There is also an enhanced set of widgets for Tkinter called Tix
which has recently been added to the standard Python library ( and another popular add-in is the
Python Mega-Widgets (PMW)) to fill the gap between the basic Tkinter set and those provided by
wxPython etc.

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That's enough for now. This wasn't meant to be a Tkinter reference page, just enough to get you
started. See the Tkinter section of the Python web pages for links to other Tkinter resources.

There are also several books on using Tcl/Tk and several Python books have chapters on Tkinter. I
will however come back to Tkinter in the case study, where I illustrate one way of encapsulating a
batch mode program in a GUI for improved usability.
Things to remember
GUIs controls are known as widgets
Widgets are assembled in a containment hierarchy
Different GUI toolkits provide different sets of widgets, although there will be a basic set you
can assume will be present
Frames allow you to group related widgets and form the basis of reusable GUI components
Event handling functions or methods are associated with widgets by linking their name with
the widgets command property.
OOP can simplify GUI programming significantly by creating objects that correspond to
widget groups and methods that correspond to events.

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Recursion
What will we cover?
A definition of recursion
How recursion works
How recursion helps simplify some hard problems

Note: This is a fairly advanced topic and for most applications you don't need to know anything about it.
Occasionally, it is so useful that it is invaluable, so I present it here for your study. Just don't panic if it doesn't make
sense straight away.

What is it?
Despite what I said earlier about looping being one of the cornerstones of programming it is in fact
possible to create programs without an explicit loop construct. Some languages, such as Scheme, do
not in fact have an explicit loop construct like For, While, etc. Instead they use a technique
known as recursion . This turns out to be a very powerful technique for some types of problem, so
we'll take a look at it now.

Recursion simply means applying a function as a part of the definition of that same function. Thus the
definition of GNU (the source of much free software) is said to be recursive because GNU stands for
'GNU's Not Unix'. ie GNU is part of the definition of GNU!

The key to making this work is that there must be a terminating condition such that the function
branches to a non-recursive solution at some point. (The GNU definition fails this test and so gets
stuck in an infinite loop).

Let's look at a simple example. The mathematical factorial function is defined as being the product of
all the numbers up to and including the argument, and the factorial of 1 is 1. Thinking about this, we
see that another way to express this is that the factorial of N is equal to N times the factorial of (N-1).

Thus:
1! = 1
2! = 1 x 2 = 2
3! = 1 x 2 x 3 = 2! x 3 = 6
N! = 1 x 2 x 3 x .... (N-2) x (N-1) x N = (N-1)! x N

So we can express this in Python like this:

def factorial(n):
if n == 1:
return 1
else:
return n * factorial(n-1)

Now because we decrement N each time and we test for N equal to 1 the function must complete.
There is a small bug in this definition however, if you try to call it with a number less than 1 it goes
into an infinite loop! To fix that change the test to use "<=" instead of "==". This goes to show how
easy it is to make mistakes with terminating conditions, this is probably the single most common cause
of bugs in recursive functions. Make sure you test all the values around your terminating point to
ensure correct operation.

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Let's see how that works when we execute it. Notice that the return statement returns n * (the
result of the next factorial call) so we get:

factorial(4) = 4 * factorial(3)
factorial(3) = 3 * factorial(2)
factorial(2) = 2 * factorial(1)
factorial(1) = 1

So Python now works its way back up substituting the values:

factorial(2) = 2 * 1 = 2
factorial(3) = 3 * 2 = 6
factorial(4) = 4 * 6 = 24

Writing the factorial function without recursion actually isn't that difficult, try it as an exercise.
Basically you need to loop over all the numbers up to N multiplying as you go. However as we'll see
below some functions are much harder to write without recursion.

Recursing over lists

The other area where recursion is very useful is in processing lists. Provided we can test for an empty
list, and generate a list minus its first element we can use recursion easily. In Python we do that using
a technique called slicing. This is explained fully in the Python manual but for our purposes all you
need to know is that using an "index" of [1:] on a list returns all of the elements from 1 to the end of
the list. So to get the first element of a list called L:

first = L[0] # just use normal indexing

And to get the rest of the list:

butfirst = L[1:] # use slicing to get elements 1,2,3,4...

Let's try it out at the Python prompt, just to reassure ourselves that it works:

>>> L =[1,2,3,4,5]
>>> print( L[0] )
1
>>> print( L[1:] )
[2,3,4,5]

OK, let's get back to using recursion to print lists. Consider the trivial case of printing each element of
a list of strings using a function printList:

def printList(L):
if L:
print( L[0] )
printList(L[1:])

If L is true - non empty - we print the first element then process the rest of the list like this:

# NON PYTHON PSEUDO CODE

PrintList([1,2,3])

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prints [1,2,3][0] => 1

runs printList([1,2,3][1:]) => printList([2,3])
=> we're now in printList([2,3])
prints [2,3][0] => 2
runs printList([2,3][1:]) => printList([3])
=> we are now in printList([3])
prints [3][0] => 3
runs printList([3][1:]) => printList([])
=> we are now in printList([])
"if L" is false for an empty list, so we return None
=> we are back in printList([3])
it reaches the end of the function and returns None
=> we are back in printList([2,3])
it reaches the end of the function and returns None
=> we are back in printList([1,2,3])
it reaches the end of the function and returns None

[Note: The above explanation is adapted from one given by Zak Arntson on the Python Tutor mailing list, July
2003]

For a simple list that's a trivial thing to do using a simple for loop. But consider what happens if the
List is complex and contains other lists within it. If we can test whether an item is a List using the
built-in type() function and if it is a list then we can call printList() recursively. If it wasn't a list
we simply print it. Let's try that:

def printList(L):
# if its empty do nothing
if not L: return
# if it's a list call printList on 1st element
if type(L[0]) == type([]):
printList(L[0])
else: #no list so just print
print( L[0] ) # now process the rest of L
printList( L[1:] )

Now if you try to do that using a conventional loop construct you'll find it very difficult. Recursion
makes a very complex task comparatively simple.

There is a catch (of course!). Recursion on large data structures tends to eat up memory so if you are
short of memory, or have very large data structures to process the more complex conventional code
may be safer.

Finally, both VBScript and JavaScript support recursion too. However since there is little to say that
has not already been said I will leave you with a recursive version of the factorial function in each
language:

<script type="text/vbscript">
Function factorial(N)
if N <=1 Then
Factorial = 1
Else
Factorial = N * Factorial(N-1)
End If
End Function

Document.Write "7! = " & CStr(Factorial(7))

</script>

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<script type="text/javascript">
function factorial(n){
if (n <= 1)
return 1;
else
return n * factorial(n-1);
};

document.write("6! = " + factorial(6));

</script>

OK, let's now take another leap into the unknown as we introduce Functional Programming.
Things to Remember
Recursive functions call themselves within their own definition
Recursive functions must have a non-recursive terminating condition or an infinite loop will
occur.
Recursion is often, but not always, memory hungry

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Functional Programming
What will we Cover?
The difference between Functional and more traditional programming styles
Python FP functions and techniques
Lambda functions
Short Circuit Boolean evaluation and conditional expressions
Programs as expressions

In this topic we look at how Python can support yet another programming style: Functional Programming(FP). As
with Recursion this is a genuinely advanced topic which you may wish to ignore for the present. Functional
techniques do have some uses in day to day programming and the supporters of FP believe it to be a fundamentally
better way to develop software.

What is Functional Programming?

Functional programming should not be confused with imperative (or procedural) programming.
Neither is it like object oriented programming. It is something different. Not radically so, since the
concepts that we will be exploring are familiar programming concepts, just expressed in a different
way. The philosophy behind how these concepts are applied to solving problems is also a little
different.

Functional programming is all about expressions. In fact another way to describe FP might be to term
it expression oriented programming since in FP everything reduces to an expression. You should
recall that an expression is a collection of operations and variables that results in a single value. Thus
x == 5 is a boolean expression. 5 + (7-Y) is an arithmetic expression. And "Hello
world".uppercase() is a string expression. The latter is also a function call (Or more strictly a
method call) on the string object "Hello world" and, as we shall see, functions are very important
in FP (You might already have guessed that from the name!).

Functions are used as objects in FP. That is they are often passed around within a program in much
the same way as other variables. We have seen examples of this in our GUI programs where we
assigned the name of a function to the command attribute of a Button control. We treated the event
handler function as an object and assigned a reference to the function to the Button. This idea of
passing functions around our program is key to FP.

Functional Programs also tend to be heavily List oriented.

Finally FP tries to focus on the what rather than the how of problem solving. That is, a functional
program should describe the problem to be solved rather than focus on the mechanism of solution.
There are several programming languages which aim to work in this way, one of the most widely used
is Haskell and the Haskell web site ( www.haskell.org) has numerous papers describing the
philosophy of FP as well as the Haskell language. (My personal opinion is that this goal, however
laudable, is rather overstated by FP's advocates.)

A pure functional program is structured by defining an expression which captures the intent of the
program. Each term of the expression is in turn a statement of a characteristic of the problem (maybe
encapsulated as another expression) and the evaluation of each of these terms eventually yields a
solution.

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Well, that's the theory. Does it work? Yes, sometimes it works very well. For some types of problem
it is a natural and powerful technique. Unfortunately for many other problems it requires a fairly
abstract thinking style, heavily influenced by mathematical principles. The resultant code is often far
from readable to the layman programmer. The resultant code is also very often much shorter than the
equivalent imperative code and more reliable.

It is these latter qualities of conciseness and reliability that have drawn many conventional imperative
or object oriented programmers to investigate FP. Even if not embraced whole heartedly there are
several powerful tools that can be used by all.

FP and Reliability
The reliability of Functional Programs comes in part from the very close relationship between FP
constructs and formal specification languages such as Z or VDM. If a problem is specified in a formal
language it is a fairly straightforward step to translate the specification into an FP language like
Haskell. Of course if the original specification is wrong then the resultant program will merely
accurately reflect the error!

This principle is known in computer science as "Garbage In, Garbage Out". The inherent difficulty
of expressing system requirements in a concise and unambiguous manner remains one of the greatest
challenges of software engineering.

How does Python do it?

Python provides several functions which enable a functional approach to programming. These
functions are all convenience features in that they can be written in Python fairly easily. What is more
important however is the intent implicit in their provision, namely to allow the Python programmer to
work in a FP manner if he/she wishes.

We will look at some of the functions provided and see how they operate on some sample data
structures that we define as:

spam = ['pork','ham','spices']
numbers = [1,2,3,4,5]

def eggs(item):
return item

map(aFunction, aSequence)

This function applies a Python function, aFunction to each member of aSequence. The expression:

L = map(eggs, spam)
print( list(L) )

Results in a new list (in this case identical to spam) being returned in L. Notice that we passed the
function eggs() into the map() function as a value. (That is we didn't use parentheses to execute the
function code, we just used its name as a reference to the function.) You might recall we did the same
thing with event handlers in the GUI Topic. This ability to treat functions as values is one of the key
features of Functional Programming.

We could have achieved the same effect by writing:

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for i in spam:
L.append(i)
print( L )

Notice however, that the map function allows us to remove the need for a nested block of code. From
one point of view that reduces the complexity of the program by one level. We'll see that as a
recurring theme of FP; that use of the FP functions reduces the relative complexity of the code by
eliminating blocks.

filter(aFunction, aSequence)

As the name suggests filter extracts each element in the sequence for which the function returns
True. Consider our list of numbers. If we want to create a new list of only odd numbers we can
produce it like so:

def isOdd(n): return (n%2 != 0) # use mod operator

L = filter(isOdd, numbers)
print( list(L) )

Again notice that we pass the name of the isOdd function into filter as an argument value rather
than calling isOdd() as a function.

Alternatively we can write:

def isOdd(n): return (n%2 != 0)

for i in numbers:
if isOdd(i):
L.append(i)
print( L )

Again notice that the conventional code requires two levels of indentation to achieve the same result.
Again the increased indentation is an indication of increased code complexity.

There are a few other functional programming tools in a module called functools which you might
like to import and explore at the >>> prompt. (Remember dir() and help() are your friends.)

lambda

One feature you may have noticed in the examples so far is that the functions passed to the FP
functions tend to be very short, often only a single line of code. To save the effort of defining lots of
very small functions Python provides another aid to FP - lambda. The name lambda comes from a
branch of mathematics called Lambda Calculus which uses the Greek letter Lambda to represent a
similar concept.

Lambda is a term used to refer to an anonymous function, that is, a block of code which can be
executed as if it were a function but without a name. Lambdas can be defined anywhere within a
program that a legal Python expression can occur, which means we can use them inside our FP
functions.

A Lambda looks like this:

lambda <aParameterList> : <a Python expression using the parameters>

Thus the isOdd function above could be rewritten as:

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isOdd = lambda j: j%2 != 0

And we can avoid the definition line completely by creating the lambda within the call to filter,
like so:

L = filter(lambda j: j%2 != 0, spam)

print( list(L) )

And the call to map can be done using:

L = map(lambda n: n, numbers)
print( list(L) )

By the way, you may have noticed that we have been explicitly converting the results of map() and
filter() to lists. This is because map and filter are actually classes that return instances of
something called an iterator. An iterator is basically something that acts like a list when used in a loop
and can be converted to a list but is more efficient in the way it uses memory. Our old friend
range() is also an iterator. Python makes it possible to create your own iterators, should you need
to, but I won't be discussing that in the tutorial.

List Comprehension

List comprehension is a technique for building new lists borrowed from Haskell and introduced in
Python since version 2.0. It has a slightly obscure syntax, similar to mathematical set notation. It looks
like this:

[<expression> for <value> in <collection> if <condition>]

Which is equivalent to:

L = []
for value in collection:
if condition:
L.append(expression)

As with the other FP constructs this saves some lines and two levels of indentation. Let's look at some
practical examples.

First let's create a list of all the even numbers:

>>> [n for n in range(10) if n % 2 == 0 ]

[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]

That says we want a list of values (n) where n is selected from the range 0-9 and n is even(n % 2 ==
0).

The condition at the end could, of course, be replaced by a function, provided the function returns a
value that Python can interpret as boolean. Thus looking again at the previous example we could
rewrite it as:

>>>def isEven(n): return ((n%2) == 0)

>>> [ n for n in range(10) if isEven(n) ]

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[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]

Now let's create a list of the squares of the first 5 numbers:

>>> [n*n for n in range(5)]

[0, 1, 4, 9, 16]

Notice that the final if clause is not needed in every case. Here the initial expression is n*n and we use
all of the values from the range.

Finally let's use an existing collection instead of the range function:

>>> values = [1, 13, 25, 7]

>>> [x for x in values if x < 10]
[1, 7]

This could be used to replace the following filter function:

>>> print( list(filter(lambda x: x < 10, values)) )

[1, 7]

List comprehensions are not limited to one variable or one test however the code starts to become
very complex as more variables and tests are introduced.

Whether comprehensions or the traditional functions seem most natural or appropriate to you is
purely subjective. When building a new collection based on an existing collection you can use either
the previous FP functions or the new list comprehensions. When creating a completely new collection
it is usually easier to use a comprehension.

Remember though that while these constructs may seem appealing, the expressions needed to get the
desired result can become so complex that it's easier to just expand them out to their traditional
python equivalents. There is no shame in doing so - readability is always better than obscurity,
especially if the obscurity is just for the sake of being clever!

Other constructs
Of course while these functions are useful in their own right they are not sufficient to allow a full FP
style within Python. The control structures of the language also need to be altered, or at least
substituted, by an FP approach. One way to achieve this is by applying a side effect of how Python
evaluates boolean expressions.

Short Circuit evaluation

Because Python uses short circuit evaluation of boolean expressions certain properties of these
expressions can be exploited. To recap on short-circuit evaluation: when a boolean expression is
evaluated the evaluation starts at the left hand expression and proceeds to the right, stopping when it
is no longer necessary to evaluate any further to determine the final outcome.

Taking some specific examples let's see how short circuit evaluation works:

>>> def TRUE():

... print( 'TRUE' )

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... return True

...
>>>def FALSE():
... print( 'FALSE' )
... return False
...

First we define two functions that tell us when they are being executed and return the value of their
names. Now we use these to explore how boolean expressions are evaluated (Note that the upper
case output is from the functions whereas the mixed case output is the result of the expression):

>>>print( TRUE() and FALSE() )

TRUE
FALSE
False
>>>print( TRUE() and TRUE() )
TRUE
TRUE
True
>>>print( FALSE() and TRUE() )
FALSE
False
>>>print( TRUE() or FALSE() )
TRUE
True
>>>print( FALSE() or TRUE() )
FALSE
TRUE
True
>>>print( FALSE() or FALSE() )
FALSE
FALSE
False

Notice that only IF the first part of an AND expression is True then and only then will the second
part be evaluated. If the first part is False then the second part will not be evaluated since the
expression as a whole cannot be True.

Likewise in an OR based expression if the first part is True then the second part need not be
evaluated since the whole must be True.

There is one other feature of Python's evaluation of boolean expressions that we can take advantage
of, namely that when evaluating an expression Python does not simply return True or False, rather
it returns the actual value of the expression. Thus if testing for an empty string (which would count as
False) like this:

if "This string is not empty": print( "Not Empty" )

else: print( "No string there" )

Python just returns the string itself!

We can use these properties to reproduce branching like behavior. For example suppose we have a
piece of code like the following:

if TRUE(): print( "It is True" )

else: print( "It is False" )

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We can replace that with the FP style construct:

V = (TRUE() and "It is True") or ("It is False")

print( V )

Try working through that example and then substitute the call to TRUE() with a call to FALSE().

Thus by using short circuit evaluation of boolean expressions we have found a way to eliminate
conventional if/else statements from our programs. However, these tricks can backfire so in recent
versions of Python a new construct has been introduced that allows us to write an if/else condition as
an expression, and it is called a conditional expression, and it looks like this:

result = <True expression> if <test condition> else <False expression>

And a real example looks like this:

>>> print( "This is True" if TRUE() else "This is not printed" )

TRUE
This is True

And using the else:

>>> print( "This is True" if FALSE() else "We see it this time" )
FALSE
We see it this time

You may recall that in the recursion topic we observed that recursion could be used to replace the
loop construct. Thus combining recursion with conditional expressions can remove all conventional
control structures from our program, replacing them with pure expressions. This is a big step towards
enabling pure FP style solutions.

To put all of this into practice let's write a completely functional style factorial program using
lambda instead of def, recursion instead of a loop and a conditional expression instead of the usual
if/else:

>>> factorial = lambda n: 1 if (n <= 1) else (factorial(n-1) * n)

>>> print( factorial(5) )
120

And that really is all there is to it. It may not be quite so readable as the more conventional Python
code but it does work and is a purely functional style function in that it is a pure expression.

Conclusions
At this point you may be wondering what exactly is the point of all of this? You would not be alone.
Although FP appeals to many Computer Science academics (and often to mathematicians) most
practicing programmers seem to use FP techniques sparingly and in a kind of hybrid fashion mixing it
with more traditional imperative styles as they feel appropriate.

When you have to apply operations to elements in a list such that map or filter seem the natural
way to express the solution then by all means use them. Just occasionally you may even find that
recursion is more appropriate than a conventional loop. Even more rarely will you find a use for short

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circuit evaluation or, better, a conditional expression rather than conventions if/else - particularly if
required within an expression. As with any programming tool, don't get carried away with the
philosophy, rather use whichever tool is most appropriate to the task in hand. At least you know that
alternatives exist!

There is one final point to make about lambda. There is one area outside the scope of FP that lambda
finds a real use and that's for defining event handlers in GUI programming. Event handlers are often
very short functions, or maybe they simply call some larger function with a few hard-wired argument
values. In either case a lambda function can be used as the event handler which avoids the need to
define lots of small individual functions and fill up the name space with names that would only be used
once. Remember that a lambda statement returns a function object. This function object is the one
passed to the widget and is called at the time the event occurs. If you recall how we define a Button
widget in Tkinter, then a lambda would appear like this:

def write(s): print( s )

b = Button(parent, text="Press Me",
command = lambda : write("I got pressed!"))
b.pack()

Of course in this case we could have done the same thing by just assigning a default parameter value
to write() and assigning write to the command value of the Button. However even here using the
lambda form gives us the advantage that the single write() function can now be used for multiple
buttons just by passing a different string from the lambda. Thus we can add a second button:

b2 = Button(parent, text="Or Me",

command = lambda : write("So did I!"))
b2.pack()

We can also employ lambda when using the bind technique, which sends an event object as an
argument:

b3 = Button(parent, text="Press me as well")

b3.bind(<Button-1>, lambda ev : write("Pressed"))

Well, that really is that for Functional Programming. There are lots of other resources if you want to
look deeper into it, some are listed below. Neither VBScript nor JavaScript directly support FP but
both can be used in a functional style by a determined programmer. (In fact many of the deeper
aspects of JavaScript are functional by nature.) The key being to structure your programs as
expressions and not to allow side-effects to modify program variables.

Other resources

There is an excellent article by David Mertz on the IBM web site about FP in Python. It goes
into more detail about control structures and provides more detailed examples of the concept.
Other languages support FP even better than Python. Examples include:: Lisp, Scheme,
Haskell, ML and some others. The Haskell web site in particular includes a wealth of
information about FP.
There is also a newsgroup, comp.lang.functional where you can catch up on the latest
happenings and find a useful FAQ.

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There are several book references to be found on the above reference sites. One classic book,
which is not entirely about FP but does cover the principles well is Structure & Interpretation
of Computer Programs by Abelman, Sussman and Sussman. This text focuses on Scheme, a
version of Lisp favoured by many academics. My personal primary source has been the book
The Haskell School of Expression by Paul Hudak which is, naturally enough, about Haskell.

If anyone else finds a good reference drop me an email via the link below.
Things to Remember
Functional programs are pure expressions
Python provides map, filter and reduce as well as list comprehensions to support
FP style programming
lambda expressions are anonymous (i.e. unnamed) blocks of code that can be assigned to
variables or used as functions
Boolean expressions are evaluated only as far as necessary to ensure the result, which fact
enables them to be used as control structures
By combining the FP features of Python with recursion it is possible (but usually not
advisable) to write almost any function in an FP style in Python.

Previous Next Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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A Case Study
For this case study we are going to expand on the word counting program we developed earlier. We
are going to create a program which mimics the Unix wc program in that it outputs the number of
lines, words and characters in a file. We will go further than that however and also output the number
of sentences, clauses and paragraphs. We will follow the development of this program stage by stage
gradually increasing its capability then moving it into a module to make it reusable, turning it into an
OO implementation for maximum extendability and finally wrapping it in a GUI for ease of use.

Although we will be using Python throughout it would be possible to build JavaScript or VBScript
versions of the program with only a little adaptation.

Additional features that could be implemented but will be left as exercises for the reader are to

calculate the FOG index of the text, where the FOG index can be defined (roughly) as:

(Average words per sentence) + (Percentage of words more than 5 letters) * 0.4

and indicates the complexity of the text,

calculate the number of unique words used and their frequency,

create a new version which analyzes RTF files.

Counting lines, words and characters

Let's revisit the previous word counter:
import string
def numwords(s):
list = string.split(s)
return len(list)

inp = open("menu.txt","r")
total = 0

# accumulate totals for each line

for line in inp.readlines():
total = total + numwords(line)
print "File had %d words" % total

inp.close()

We need to add a line and character count. The line count is easy since we loop over each line we just
need a variable to increment on each iteration of the loop. The character count is only marginally
harder since we can iterate over the list of words adding their lengths in yet another variable.

We also need to make the program more general purpose by reading the name of the file from the
command line or if not provided, prompting the user for the name. (An alternative strategy would be
to read from standard input, which is what the real wc does.)

So the final wc looks like:

import sys, string

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# Get the file name either from the command-line or the user
if len(sys.argv) != 2:
name = input("Enter the file name: ")
else:
name = sys.argv[1]

inp = open(name,"r")

# initialize counters to zero; which also creates variables

words, lines, chars = 0, 0, 0

for line in inp:

lines += 1

# Break into a list of words and count them

list = line.split()
words += len(list)
chars += len(line) # Use original line which includes spaces etc.

print "%s has %d lines, %d words and %d characters" % (name, lines, words, chars)
inp.close()

If you are familiar with the Unix wc command you know that you can pass it a wild-carded filename
to get stats for all matching files as well as a grand total. This program only caters for straight
filenames. If you want to extend it to cater for wild cards take a look at the glob module and build a
list of names then simply iterate over the file list. You'll need temporary counters for each file then
cumulative counters for the grand totals. Or you could use a dictionary instead...

Counting sentences instead of lines

When I started to think about how we could extend this to count sentences and words rather than
'character groups' as above, my initial idea was to first loop through the file extracting the lines into a
list then loop through each line extracting the words into another list. Finally to process each 'word' to
remove extraneous characters.

Thinking about it a little further it becomes evident that if we simply collect the lines we can analyze
the punctuation characters to count sentences, clauses etc. (by defining what we consider a
sentence/clause in terms of punctuation items). Let's try sketching that in pseudo-code:

foreach line in file:

increment line count
if line empty:
increment paragraph count
count the clause terminators
count the sentence terminators

report paras, lines, sentences, clauses, groups, words.

We will be using regular expressions in the solution here, it may be worth going back and reviewing
that topic if you aren't sure how they work. Now lets try turning our pseudo code into real code:

import re,sys

# Use Regular expressions to find the tokens

sentenceStops = ".?!"
clauseStops = sentenceStops + ",;:\-" # escape '-' to avoid range effect
sentenceRE = re.compile("[%s]" % sentenceStops)
clauseRE = re.compile("[%s]" % clauseStops)

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# Get file name from commandline or user

if len(sys.argv) != 2:
name = input("Enter the file name: ")
else:
name = sys.argv[1]

inp = open(name,"r")
# Now initialize counters
lines, words, chars = 0, 0, 0
sentences,clauses = 0, 0
paras = 1 # assume always at least 1 para

# process file
for line in inp:
lines += 1
if line.strip() == "": # empty line
paras += 1
words += len(line.split())
chars += len(line.strip())
sentences += len(sentenceRE.findall(line))
clauses += len(clauseRE.findall(line))

# Display results
print '''
The file %s contains:
%d\t characters
%d\t words
%d\t lines in
%d\t paragraphs with
%d\t sentences and
%d\t clauses.
''' % (name, chars, words, lines, paras, sentences, clauses)

There are several points to note about this code:

It uses regular expressions to make the searches most efficient. We could have done the same
thing using simple string searches, but we would have needed to search for each punctuation
character separately. Regular expressions maximize the efficiency of our program by allowing
a single search to find all of the items we want. However regular expressions are also easy to
mess up. My first attempt I forgot to escape the '-' character and that then got treated as a
range by the regular expression, with the result that any numbers in the file got treated as
clause separators! After much head scratching it took a call to the Python community to spot
the mistake. A quick '\' character inserted and suddenly all was well again.
This program is effective in that it does what we want it to do. It is less effective from the
re-usability point of view because there are no functions that we can call from other programs,
it is not yet a modular program.
The sentence tests are less than perfect. For example abbreviated titles such as "Mr." will
count as a sentence because of the period. We could improve the regular expression by
searching for a period, followed by one or more spaces, followed by an uppercase letter, but
our "Mr." example will still fail since "Mr." is usually followed by a name which begins with an
uppercase letter! This serves to illustrate how difficult it is to parse natural languages
effectively.

As the case study progresses we will address the second point about re-usability and also start to look
at the issues around parsing text in a little more depth, although even by the end we will not have
produced a perfect text parser. That is a task that takes us well beyond the sort of programs a
beginner might be expected to write.

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Turning it into a module

To make the code we have written into a module there are a few basic design principles that we need
to follow. First we need to put the bulk of the code into functions so that users of the module can
access them. Secondly we need to move the start code (the bit that gets the file name) into a separate
piece of code that won't be executed when the function is imported. Finally we will leave the global
definitions as module level variables so that users can change their value if they want to.

Let's tackle these items one by one. First move the main processing block into a function, we'll call it
analyze(). We'll pass a file object into the function as a parameter and the function will return the
list of counter values in a tuple.

It will look like this:

#############################
# Module: grammar
# Created: A.J. Gauld, 2004,8,8
#
# Function:
# Provides facilities to count words, lines, characters,
# paragraphs, sentences and 'clauses' in text files.
# It assumes that sentences end with [.!?] and paragraphs
# have a blank line between them. A 'clause' is simply
# a segment of sentence separated by punctuation. The
# sentence and clause searches are regular expression
# based and the user can change the regex used. Can also
# be run as a program.
#############################
import re, sys

############################
# initialize global variables
paras = 1 # We will assume at least 1 paragraph!
lines, sentences, clauses, words, chars = 0,0,0,0,0
sentenceMarks = '.?!'
clauseMarks = '&();:,\-' + sentenceMarks
sentenceRE = None # set via a function call
clauseRE = None
format = '''
The file %s contains:
%d\t characters
%d\t words
%d\t lines in
%d\t paragraphs with
%d\t sentences and
%d\t clauses.
'''

############################
# Now define the functions that do the work

# setCounters allows us to recompile the regex if we change

# the token lists
def setCounterREs():
global sentenceRE, clauseRE
sentenceRE = re.compile('[%s] +' % sentenceMarks)
clauseRE = re.compile('[%s] +' % clauseMarks)

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# reset counters gets called by analyze()

def resetCounters():
chars, words, lines, sentences, clauses = 0,0,0,0,0
paras = 1

# reportStats is intended for the driver

# code, it offers a simple text report
def reportStats(theFile):
print format % (theFile.name, chars, words, lines,
paras, sentences, clauses)

# analyze() is the key function which processes the file

def analyze(theFile):
global chars,words,lines,paras,sentences,clauses
# check if REs already compiled
if not (sentenceRE and clauseRE):
setCounterREs()
resetCounters()
for line in theFile:
lines += 1
if line.strip() == "": # empty line
paras += 1
words += len(line.split())
chars += len(line.strip())
sentences += len(sentenceRE.findall(line))
clauses += len(clauseRE.findall(line))

# Make it run if called from the command line (in which

# case the 'magic' __name__ variable gets set to '__main__'
if __name__ == "__main__":
if len(sys.argv) != 2:
print "Usage: python grammar.py <filename>"
sys.exit()
else:
aFile = open(sys.argv[1],"r")
analyze(aFile)
reportStats(aFile)
aFile.close()

First thing to notice is the commenting at the top. This is common practice to let readers of the file get
an idea of what it contains and how it should be used. The version information (Author and date) is
useful too if comparing results with someone else who may be using a more or less recent version.

The final section is a feature of Python that calls any module loaded at the command line
"__main__". We can test the special, built-in __name__ variable and, if it's main, we know that
the module is not just being imported, but run, and so we execute the trigger code inside the if block.

This trigger code includes a user friendly hint about how the program should be run if no filename is
provided, or indeed if too many filenames are provided, it could instead - or in addition - ask the user
for a filename using input().

Notice that the analyze() function uses the initialization functions to make sure the counters and
regular expressions are all set up properly before it starts. This caters for the possibility of a user
calling analyze several times, possibly after changing the regular expressions used to count clauses and
sentences.

Finally note the use of global to ensure that the module level variables get set by the functions,
without global we would create local variables and have no effect on the module level ones.

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Using the grammar module

Having created a module we can use it as a program at the OS prompt as before by typing:

C:\> python grammar.py spam.txt

However provided we saved the module in a location where Python can find it, we can also import
the module into another program or at the Python prompt. Lets try some experiments based on a test
file called spam.txt which we can create and looks like this:

This is a file called spam. It has

3 lines, 2 sentences and, hopefully,
5 clauses.

Now, let's fire up Python and play a little:

>>> import grammar

>>> grammar.setCounterREs()
>>> txtFile = open("spam.txt")
>>> grammar.analyze(txtFile)
>>> grammar.reportStats()
The file spam.txt contains:
80 characters
16 words
3 lines in
1 paragraphs with
2 sentences and
1 clauses.

>>> # redefine sentences as ending in vowels!

>>> grammar.sentenceMarks = 'aeiou'
>>> grammar.setCounterREs()
>>> grammar.analyze(txtFile)
>>> print grammar.sentences
21
>>> txtFile.close()

As you can see redefining the sentence tokens changed the sentence count radically. Of course the
definition of a sentence is pretty bizarre but it shows that our module is usable and moderately
customizable too. Notice too that we were able to print the sentence count directly, we don't need to
use the provided reportStats() function. This demonstrates the value of an important design
principle, namely separation of data and presentation. By keeping the display of data separate from
the calculation of the data we make our module much more flexible for our users.

To conclude our course we will rework the grammar module to use OO techniques and then add a
simple GUI front end. In the process you will see how an OO approach results in modules which are
even more flexible for the user and more extensible too.

Classes and objects

One of the biggest problems for the user of our module is the reliance on global variables. This means
that it can only analyze one file at a time, any attempt to handle more than that will result in the global
values being over-written.

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By moving these globals into a class we can then create multiple instances of the class (one per file)
and each instance gets its own set of variables. Further, by making the methods sufficiently granular
we can create an architecture whereby it is easy for the creator of a new type of document object to
modify the search criteria to cater for the rules of the new type. (eg. by rejecting all HTML tags from
the word list we could process HTML files as well as plain ASCII text).

Our first attempt at this creates a Document class to represent the file we are processing:

#! /usr/local/bin/python
################################
# Module: document.py
# Author: A.J. Gauld
# Date: 2004/08/10
# Version: 3.0
################################
# This module provides a Document class which
# can be subclassed for different categories of
# Document(text, HTML, Latex etc). Text and HTML are
# provided as samples.
#
# Primary services available include
# - analyze(),
# - reportStats().
################################
import sys,re

'''
Provides 2 classes for parsing "text/files.
A Generic Document class for plain ACII text,
and an HTMLDocument for HTML files.
'''

class Document:
sentenceMarks = '?!.'
clauseMarks = '&()\-;:,' + sentenceMarks

def __init__(self, filename):

self.filename = filename
self.setREs()
self.setCounters()

def setCounters(self):
self.paras = 1
self.lines = self.getLines()
self.sentences, self.clauses, self.words, self.chars = 0,0,0,0

def setREs(self):
self.sentenceRE = re.compile('[%s]' % Document.sentenceMarks)
self.clauseRE = re.compile('[%s]' % Document.clauseMarks)

def getLines(self):
infile = open(self.filename)
lines = infile.readlines()
infile.close()
return lines

def analyze(self):
self.setCounters()
for line in self.lines:
self.sentences += len(self.sentenceRE.findall(line))
self.clauses += len(self.clauseRE.findall(line))
self.words += len(line.split())

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self.chars += len(line.strip())
if line.strip() == "":
self.paras += 1

def formatResults(self):
format = '''
The file %s contains:
%d\t characters
%d\t words
%d\t lines in
%d\t paragraphs with
%d\t sentences and
%d\t clauses.
'''
return format % (self.filename, self.chars,
self.words, len(self.lines),
self.paras, self.sentences, self.clauses)

class TextDocument(Document):
pass

class HTMLDocument(Document):
pass

if __name__ == "__main__":
if len(sys.argv) == 2:
doc = Document(sys.argv[1])
doc.analyze()
print doc.formatResults()
else:
print "Usage: python document3.py "
print "Failed to analyze file"

There are several points to notice here. First is the use of class variables at the beginning of the class
definition to store the sentence and clause markers. Class variables are shared by all the instances of
the class so they are a good place to store common information. They can be accessed by using the
class name, as I've done here, or by using the usual self. I prefer to use the class name because it
highlights the fact that they are class variables.

I've also added a new method, setCounters() for flexibility when we come to deal with other
document types. It's quite likely that we will use a different set of counters when analyzing HTML
files - maybe the number of tags for example. By pairing up the setCounters() and
formatResults() methods and providing a new analyze() method we can pretty much deal with
any kind of document.

The other methods are more stable, reading the lines of a file is pretty standard regardless of file type
and setting the two regular expressions is a convenience feature for experimenting, if we don't need to
we won't.

As it stands we now have functionality identical to our module version but expressed as a class. But
now to really utilize OOP style we need to deconstruct some of our class so that the base level or
abstractDocument only contains the bits that are truly generic. The Text handling bits will move into
the more specific, or concrete TextDocument class. We'll see how to do that next.

Text Document

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We are all familiar with plain text documents, but it's worth stopping to consider exactly what we
mean by a text document as compared to a more generic concept of a document. Text documents
consist of plain ASCII arranged in lines which contain groups of letters arranged as words separated
by spaces and other punctuation marks. Groups of lines form paragraphs which are separated by blank
lines (other definitions are possible of course, but these are the ones I will use.) A vanilla document is
a file comprising lines of ASCII characters but we know very little about the formatting of those
characters within the lines. Thus our vanilla document class should really only be able to open a file,
read the contents into a list of lines and perhaps return counts of the number of characters and the
number of lines. It will provide empty hook methods for subclasses of document to implement.

On the basis of what we just described a Document class will look like:

#############################
# Module: document
# Created: A.J. Gauld, 2004/8/15
#
# Function:
# Provides abstract Document class to count lines, characters
# and provide hook methods for subclasses to use to process
# more specific document types
#############################

class Document:
def __init__(self,filename):
self.filename = filename
self.lines = self.getLines()
self.chars = reduce(lambda l1,l2: l1+l2, [len(L) for L in self.lines])
self._initSeparators()

def getLines(self):
f = open(self.filename,'r')
lines = f.readlines()
f.close()
return lines

# list of hook methods to be overridden

def formatResults(self):
return "%s contains $d lines and %d characters" % (len(self.lines),
self.chars)
def _initSeparators(self): pass
def analyze(self): pass

Note that the _initSeparators method has an underscore in front of its name. This is a style
convention often used by Python programmers to indicate a method that should only be called from
inside the class's methods, it is not intended to be accessed by users of the object. Such a method is
sometimes called protected or private in other languages.

Also notice that I have used the functional programming function reduce() along with a
lambda function and a list comprehension to calculate the number of characters. Recall that
reduce takes a list and performs an operation (the lambda) on the first two members and inserts the
result as the first member, it repeats this until only the final result remains which is returned as the
final result of the function. In this case the list is the list of lengths of the lines in the file produced by
the comprehension and so it replaces the first two lengths with their sum and then gradually adds
each subsequent length until all the line lengths are processed. Actually, in this case, I could have used
the built in function sum() to do the same thing, but I wanted to illustrate the functional
programming structures being used in a real example.

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Finally note that because this is an abstract class we have not provided a runnable option using if
__name__ == etc

Our text document now looks like:

class TextDocument(Document):
def __init__(self,filename):
self.paras = 1
self.words, self.sentences, self.clauses = 0,0,0
Document.__init__(self, filename)

# now override hooks

def formatResults(self):
format = '''
The file %s contains:
%d\t characters
%d\t words
%d\t lines in
%d\t paragraphs with
%d\t sentences and
%d\t clauses.
'''
return format % (self.filename, self.chars,
self.words, len(self.lines),
self.paras, self.sentences, self.clauses)

def _initSeparators(self):
sentenceMarks = "[.!?]"
clauseMarks = "[.!?,&:;-]"
self.sentenceRE = re.compile(sentenceMarks)
self.clauseRE = re.compile(clauseMarks)

def analyze(self):
for line in self.lines:
self.sentences += len(self.sentenceRE.findall(line))
self.clauses += len(self.clauseRE.findall(line))
self.words += len(line.split())
self.chars += len(line.strip())
if line.strip() == "":
self.paras += 1

if __name__ == "__main__":
if len(sys.argv) == 2:
doc = TextDocument(sys.argv[1])
doc.analyze()
print doc.formatResults()
else:
print "Usage: python <document> "
print "Failed to analyze file"

One thing to notice is that this combination of classes achieves exactly the same as our first non-OOP
version. Compare the length of this with the original file - building reusable objects is not cheap!
Unless you are sure you need to create objects for reuse consider doing a non-OOP version it will
probably be less work! However if you do think you will extend the design, as we will be doing in a
moment then the extra work will repay itself.

The next thing to consider is the physical location of the code. We could have shown two files being
created, one per class. This is a common OOP practice and keeps things well organized, but at the
expense of a lot of small files and a lot of import statements in your code when you come to use those
classes/files.

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An alternative scheme, which I have used, is to treat closely related classes as a group and locate them
all in one file, at least enough to create a minimal working program. Thus in our case we have
combined our Document and TextDocument classes in a single module. This has the advantage that
the working class provides a template for users to read as an example of extending the abstract class.
It has the disadvantage that changes to the TextDocument may inadvertently affect the Document
class and thus break some other code. There is no clear winner here and even in the Python library
there are examples of both styles. Pick a style and stick to it would be my advice.

One very useful source of information on this kind of text file manipulation is the book by David
Mertz called "Text Processing in Python" and it is available in paper form as well as online, here.
Note however that this is a fairly advanced book aimed at professional programmers so you may find
it tough going initially, but persevere because there are some very powerful lessons contained within
it.

HTML Document
The next step in our application development is to extend the capabilities so that we can analyze
HTML documents. We will do that by creating a new class. Since an HTML document is really a text
document with lots of HTML tags and a header section at the top we only need to remove those extra
elements and then we can treat it as text. Thus we will create a new HTMLDocument class derived
from TextDocument. We will override the getLines() method that we inherit from
Document such that it throws away the header and all the HTML tags.

Thus HTMLDocument looks like:

class HTMLDocument(TextDocument):
def getLines(self):
lines = TextDocument.getLines(self)
lines = self._stripHeader(lines)
lines = self._stripTags(lines)
return lines

def _stripHeader(self,lines):
''' remove all lines up until start of element '''
bodyMark = '<body>'
bodyRE = re.compile(bodyMark,re.IGNORECASE)
while bodyRE.findall(lines[0]) == []:
del lines[0]
return lines

def _stripTags(self,lines):
''' remove anything between < and >, not perfect but ok for now'''
tagMark = '<.+>'
tagRE = re.compile(tagMark)
lines2 = []
for line in lines:
line = tagRE.sub('',line).strip()
if line: lines2.append(line)
return lines2

Note 1: We have used the inherited method within getLines. This is quite common practice when
extending an inherited method. Either we do some preliminary processing or, as here, we call the
inherited code then do some extra work in the new class. This was also done in the
__init__ method of the TextDocument class above.

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Note 2: We access the inherited getLines method via TextDocument not via Document (which is
where it is actually defined) because (a) we can only 'see' TextDocument in our code and (b)
TextDocument inherits all of Document's features so in effect does have a getLines too.

Note 3: The other two methods are notionally private (notice the leading underscore?) and are there
to keep the logic separate and also to make extending this class easier in the future, for say an
XHTML or even XML document class? You might like to try building one of those as an exercise.

Note 4: It is very difficult to accurately strip HTML tags using regular expressions due to the ability
to nest tags and because bad authoring often results in unescaped '<' and '>' characters looking like
tags when they are not. In addition tags can run across lines and all sorts of other nasties. A much
better way to convert HTML files to text is to use an HTML parser such as the one in the standard
HTMLParser module. As an exercise rewrite the HTMLDocument class to use the parser module to
generate the text lines.

To test our HTMLDocument we need to modify the driver code at the bottom of the file to look like
this:

if __name__ == "__main__":
if len(sys.argv) == 2:
doc = HTMLDocument(sys.argv[1])
doc.analyze()
print doc.formatResults()
else:
print "Usage: python <document> "
print "Failed to analyze file"

Adding a GUI
To create a GUI we will use Tkinter which we introduced briefly in the Event Driven
Programming section and further in the GUI Programming topic. This time the GUI will be slightly
more sophisticated and use a few more of the widgets that Tkinter provides.

One thing that will help us create the GUI version is that we took great care to avoid putting any print
statements in our classes, the display of output is all done in the driver code. This helps when we
come to use a GUI because we can use the same output string and display it in a widget instead of
printing it on stdout. The ability to more easily wrap an application in a GUI is a major reason to
avoid the use of print statements inside data processing functions or methods.

Designing a GUI

The first step in building any GUI application is to try to visualize how it will look. We will need to
specify a filename, so it will require an Edit or Entry control. We also need to specify whether we
want textual or HTML analysis, this type of 'one from many' choice is usually represented by a set of
Radiobutton controls. These controls should be grouped together to show that they are related.

The next requirement is for some kind of display of the results. We could opt for multiple
Label controls one per counter. Instead I will use a simple text control into which we can insert
strings, this is closer to the spirit of the commandline output, but ultimately the choice is a matter of
preference by the designer.

Finally we need a means of initiating the analysis and quitting the application. Since we will be using a
text control to display results it might be useful to have a means of resetting the display too. These
command options can all be represented by Button controls.

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Sketching these ideas as a GUI gives us something like:

+-------------------------+-----------+
| FILENAME | O TEXT |
| | O HTML |
+-------------------------+-----------+
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
+-------------------------------------+
| |
| ANALYZE RESET QUIT |
| |
+-------------------------------------+

Now we are ready to write some code. Let's take it step by step:

from Tkinter import *

import document

################### CLASS DEFINITIONS ######################

class GrammarApp(Frame):
def __init__(self, parent=0):
Frame.__init__(self,parent)
self.type = 2 # create variable with default value
self.master.title('Grammar counter')
self.buildUI()

Here we have imported the Tkinter and document modules. For the former we have made all of the
Tkinter names visible within our current module whereas with the latter we will need to prefix the
names with document.

We have also defined our application to be a subclass of Frame and the __init__ method calls the
Frame.__init__ superclass method to ensure that Tkinter is set up properly internally. We then
create an attribute which will store the document type value and finally call the buildUI method
which creates all the widgets for us. We'll look at buildUI() next:

def buildUI(self):
# Now the file information: File name and type
fFile = Frame(self)
Label(fFile, text="Filename: ").pack(side="left")
self.eName = Entry(fFile)
self.eName.insert(INSERT,"test.htm")
self.eName.pack(side=LEFT, padx=5)

# to keep the radio buttons lined up with the

# name we need another frame
fType = Frame(fFile, borderwidth=1, relief=SUNKEN)
self.rText = Radiobutton(fType, text="TEXT",
variable = self.type, value=2,
command=self.doText)
self.rText.pack(side=TOP, anchor=W)
self.rHTML = Radiobutton(fType, text="HTML",
variable=self.type, value=1,
command=self.doHTML)
self.rHTML.pack(side=TOP, anchor=W)
# make TEXT the default selection

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self.rText.select()
fType.pack(side=RIGHT, padx=3)
fFile.pack(side=TOP, fill=X)

# the text box holds the output, pad it to give a border

# and make the parent the application frame (ie. self)
self.txtBox = Text(self, width=60, height=10)
self.txtBox.pack(side=TOP, padx=3, pady=3)

# finally put some command buttons on to do the real work

fButts = Frame(self)
self.bAnal = Button(fButts, text="Analyze",
command=self.doAnalyze)
self.bAnal.pack(side=LEFT, anchor=W, padx=50, pady=2)
self.bReset = Button(fButts, text="Reset",
command=self.doReset)
self.bReset.pack(side=LEFT, padx=10)
self.bQuit = Button(fButts, text="Quit",
command=self.doQuit)
self.bQuit.pack(side=RIGHT, anchor=E, padx=50, pady=2)

fButts.pack(side=BOTTOM, fill=X)
self.pack()

I'm not going to explain all of that. If you've read my GUI topic it should mostly be clear but for more
detail I recommend that you take a look at the Tkinter tutorial and reference found on the
Pythonware web site. This is an excellent introduction and reference to Tkinter going beyond the
basics that I cover in my topic. The general principle is that you create widgets from their
corresponding classes, providing options as named parameters, then the widget is packed into its
containing frame.

The other key points to note are the use of subsidiary Frame widgets to hold the Radiobuttons and
Command buttons. The Radiobuttons also take a pair of options called variable & value, the
former links the Radiobuttons together by specifying the same external variable (self.type) and the
latter gives a unique value for each Radiobutton. Also notice the command=xxx options passed to the
button controls. These are the methods that will be called by Tkinter when the button is pressed. The
code for these comes next:

################# EVENT HANDLING METHODS ####################

# time to die...
def doQuit(self):
self.quit()

# restore default settings

def doReset(self):
self.txtBox.delete(1.0, END)
self.rText.select()

# set radio values

def doText(self):
self.type = 2

def doHTML(self):
self.type = 1

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These methods are all fairly trivial and hopefully by now are self explanatory. The final event handler
is the one which does the analysis:

# Create appropriate document type and analyze it.

# then display the results in the form
def doAnalyze(self):
filename = self.eName.get()
if filename == "":
self.txtBox.insert(END,"\nNo filename provided!\n")
return
if self.type == 2:
doc = document.TextDocument(filename)
else:
doc = document.HTMLDocument(filename)
self.txtBox.insert(END, "\nAnalyzing...\n")
doc.analyze()
resultStr = doc.formatResults()
self.txtBox.insert(END, resultStr)

Again you should be able to read this and see what it does. The key points are that:

it checks for a valid filename before creating the Document object.

It uses the self.type value set by the Radiobuttons to determine which type of Document to
create.
It appends (the END argument to insert) the results to the Text box which means we can
analyze several times and compare results - one advantage of the text box versus the multiple
label output approach.

All that's needed now is to create an instance of the GrammarApp application class and set the event
loop running, we do this here:

myApp = GrammarApp()
myApp.mainloop()

Let's take a look at the final result as seen under MS Windows, displaying the results of analyzing a
test HTML file,

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That's it. You can go on to make the HTML processing more sophisticated if you want to. You can
create new modules for new document types. You can try swapping the text box for multiple labels
packed into a frame. But for our purposes we're done. The next section offers some ideas of where to
go next depending on your programming aspirations. The main thing is to enjoy it and always
remember: the computer is dumb!

Previous References Contents

If you have any questions or feedback on this page send me mail at: alan.gauld@btinternet.com

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Under Construction

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