[Tutor] python help

[Ben Vinger]

Why are these homework programming challenges so
recognisable?  It boils down to:
Write a function that that uses X and Y techniques.
The function may be hard and challenging to write but
doesn't ever do anything interesting or anything that
is useful and complete on its own.

I realise teachers have to test mastery of certain
techniques, but they seem to lack the imagination. 
Especially with modern languagues like Python, where
you can write a whole program that actually does
something usefull using only a few lines of code it
should not be necessary to ask these kinds of dull
questions.

Just stick at it Natasha, it is far more interesting
when you the programming challenge has to accomplish a
real result.

Ben
--- Natasha Menon <natmenon at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>    
>   I have a few doubts in python programming. C if
> any of u can help me out. 
>    
>   1. 
>   In a file called string_stuff.py i have to write a
> function called frequencies that takes a string as a
> parameter and returns a dictionary where the keys
> are the characters from the string and each value is
> an integer indicating the number of times the key
> appeared in the string. 
>    
>   2.
>   Similary in the same file string_stuff.py, have to
> write a function called locations that takes a
> string as a parameter and returns a dictionary where
> the keys are the characters from the string and each
> value is a list indicating the indices in the string
> at which the key appears, sorted in increasing
> order.
>    
>   3.
>   In the same file string_stuff.py, write a function
> called concordance that takes an open file as a
> parameter and returns a dictionary where the keys
> are the strings from the file and each value is a
> list of line numbers of the lines in which the key
> appeared, sorted in increasing order. Start counting
> at 0. Each line number should appear at most once in
> a list, even if a word appears twice on a line. You
> may assume that the input consists only of
> alphabetic letters (a-z, A-Z) and whitespace. 
>    
>    
>   Id really appreciate if you could help me on these
> small question. I am tryin to learn to program in
> python.
>    
>   Thanks,
>   Natasha
> 
> 		
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