Creating Functions

3.14 Exercises

Exercise 1

Write a function named right_justify that takes a string named s as a parameter and prints the string with enough leading spaces so that the last letter of the string is in column 70 of the display.

>>> right_justify('monty')
                                                                 monty

 Hint: Use string concatenation and repetition. Also, Python provides a built-in function called len that returns the length of a string, so the value of len('monty')is 5.

Exercise 2

A function object is a value you can assign to a variable or pass as an argument. For example, do_twice is a function that takes a function object as an argument and calls it twice:

def do_twice(f):
    f()
    f()

Here’s an example that uses do_twice to call a function named print_spam twice.

def print_spam():
    print('spam')

do_twice(print_spam)

1. Type this example into a script and test it.
2. Modify do_twice so that it takes two arguments, a function object and a value, and calls the function twice, passing the value as an argument.
3. Copy the definition of print_twice from earlier in this chapter to your script.
4. Use the modified version of do_twice to call print_twice twice, passing 'spam' as an argument.
5. Define a new function called do_four that takes a function object and a value and calls the function four times, passing the value as a parameter. There should be only two statements in the body of this function, not four.

View solution here.

Exercise 3

Note: This exercise should be done using only the statements and other features we have learned so far.

1. Write a function that draws a grid like the following:

+ - - - - + - - - - +
|         |         |
|         |         |
|         |         |
|         |         |
+ - - - - + - - - - +
|         |         |
|         |         |
|         |         |
|         |         |
+ - - - - + - - - - +

Hint: to print more than one value on a line, you can print a comma-separated sequence of values:

print('+', '-')

By default, print advances to the next line, but you can override that behavior and put a space at the end, like this:

print('+', end=' ')
print('-')

The output of these statements is '+ -' on the same line. The output from the next print statement would begin on the next line.

2. Write a function that draws a similar grid with four rows and four columns.