[Tutor] namespaces and global

[Jose Amoreira]

Alan, Kent, hello!
Thanks for your help. As for your "curiosity", I'm teaching elementary physics 
to undergraduates in computer engineering. Trying to speak my students' 
language, I wanted to show them simple applications that compute numerical 
values for the kinematics formulas of uniformly accelerated motion (the weaker 
students call these formulas Chinese gibberish). 
What I had in mind was to have a module define vectors and vector algebra 
operations using a simple class definition, and another with kinematics 
formulas, like (for uniformly accelerated motion)

def pos(t):
    return r0+v0*t+0.5*a*t**2

Here r0 (initial position) v0 (initial velocity) and a (acceleration) are 
global vector parameters which I'd define in an interactive session with the 
students, but I'd rather not include them in the formal parameter list of 
function pos, just because they aren't usually displayed as such in physical 
formulae. I'd like to keep the look and feel of those formulas in the 
interactive python session, without having to type the function definitions in 
that session, but rather import them from a pre-prepared module file.

Anyway, thanks again!
Best Regards,
Jose


On Wednesday 14 October 2009 06:18:28 pm Alan Gauld wrote:
> "Jose Amoreira" <ljmamoreira at gmail.com> wrote
>
> > Of course I could redefine my module function, including the parameter a
> > in
> > the list of arguments, but I'd rather not.
>
> Why not? That would be good computer science practice and the
> most reliable way to do it. Why do you not want to go down that
> route? Is there a specific reason to use a global variable when
> use of globals is normally considered bad practice?
>
> I'm curious?