[Tutor] Alternative to for/while loop

[Bryon Adams]

On 10/25/2016 4:19 AM, Alan Gauld via Tutor wrote:
> On 25/10/16 02:38, Bryon Adams wrote:
>
>> question. The book I'm working through hasn't covered using flow control
>> yet so I'm thinking there should be a way to do this without the for
>> loop I used, but I'm at a loss here.
>
> Thee are ways to do it without using a for loop but they are
> all more advanced rather than simpler. (And they are less
> "good" than the simple program you have written in that they
> are unnecessarily complicated)
>
>> So far the book has covered: lists,
>> strings, numerical types (float, integer, etc), methods, tuples,
>> importing modules, boolean logic, and mathematical operators.
>
> You used a list comprehension in your solution, was that
> covered as part of lists? If not how did you find it?
>
>> nums = input('Enter some numbers separated by commas: ')
>> nums = [float(i) for i in nums.split(', ')]
>> print((sum(nums)) / len(nums))
>
> That's about as simple as it gets except for the surplus
> of parens in the last line:
>
> print(sum(nums) / len(nums))
>
> is sufficient.
>

     I had done a little bash, C, and Visual Basic so I figured a for 
loop would be a good way to do this (that's how I came to the idea of 
using 'for' anyway). This is my first effort since college to try and 
really learn some programming, was a hodge podge networking program and 
I didn't realise how useful or in demand some programming would be. If I 
remember correctly I was looking for how to do a for loop in python3 but 
I don't remember the terms I threw into DuckDuckGo (it definitely wasn't 
list comprehension). I believe I bookmarked it though. I ended up at a 
Stack Overflow page with instructions on how to do this.

     I'll have to skim through the chapter and see if I can find list 
comprehension, if not I'll check the back of the book for where it's 
mentioned. Wolfgang was on the money when suggesting the book was python2.

Regards,
   Bryon