[Tutor] return integer from function
Steven D'Aprano
steve at pearwood.info
Wed Feb 22 15:18:37 CET 2012
David Craig wrote:
> Hi,
> I have a function that calculates the distance between two points on a
> sphere. It works but I cant get it to return a float for use in another
> script. Anyone know how I do that??
You are going to have to explain what you mean in more detail.
If you mean, how can you pass the output of one script as the input of another
in the shell, remember that the shell communicates by passing strings through
stdout and stdin. So you need to have your first script actually print its
output, and then pipe it to the next script, just like you would when using
shell commands.
On the other hand, if you mean, how do you re-use your distance_on_unit_sphere
function in another Python program, you need to import it exactly the same as
you import math. For example, if your distance function is in a file
"sphere.py", and you want to use it in a file "calculations.py" (say), then
put this line at the top of calculations.py:
import sphere
and now you can use sphere.distance_on_unit_sphere just as you can use
math.sin and math.cos.
For this to work, though, sphere.py and calculations.py need to be in the same
folder. (There are other ways to make that work, but they start getting a
little tricky to get right.)
On the third hand, if you mean something else, you're going to need to explain
what you mean because I have no idea what it might be! :)
--
Steven
More information about the Tutor
mailing list