[Tutor] Help Passing Variables

[Prasad, Ramit]

David Hutto wrote:
> #A little more complex in terms of params:
> 
> def SwapCaseAndCenter(*kwargs):
> 
> 	if upper_or_lower == "upper":
> 		print a_string.center(center_num).upper()
> 
> 	if upper_or_lower == "lower":
> 		print a_string.center(center_num).lower()
> 
> a_string = raw_input("Give me a word, or letter: ")
> upper_or_lower = raw_input("upper, or lower character(s): ")
> center_num = int(raw_input("Where should number be centered?: "))
> SwapCaseAndCenter(a_string, upper_or_lower, center_num)
> 
> 


This function is using the global variables for each of 
its variables. To use the versions passed in you need
to define the names from kwargs; the name "kwargs" is
usually used in reference to a keyword arguments which 
should be denoted by double asterisk instead of a single one.
In this case kwargs is confusingly a positional list of arguments
(sometimes referred to as "args" instead). 

For a function called SwapCaseAndCenter, I see it doing
no case "swapping" unless it refers to changing the entire
string to a specific case? At the very least, no centering
is being done.

To format I use string formatting[0] which has its own
syntax[1]. 

>>> '{0:^40}'.format( 'test' ) # The below line is the repr
'                  test                  '
>>> '{1:^{0}}'.format( 40, 'test' ) # Dynamically generate width
'                  test                  '
>>> '{0:^{1}}'.format( 'test', 40 )
'                  test                  '

 [0]: http://docs.python.org/2/library/string.html#formatstrings
[1]: http://docs.python.org/2/library/string.html#formatspec 

Ramit Prasad


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