Added control flows and conditional part.
* Control statements
*** Outline
***** Introduction
******* What are we going to do?
******* How are we going to do?
******* Arsenal Required
********* working knowledge of arrays
*** Script
Welcome.
In this tutorial we shall be covering conditional statements and
control loops. We have used them already in some of our previous
sessions with brief introduction. We shall be covering 'if-else'
statement, 'while' and 'for' loops.
For understanding of conditional statement we will write a python
script. Open Scite text editor by going to Applications->
Programming->Scite:
First we prompt user for entering a integer by using raw_input
x = int(raw_input("Enter an integer: "))
we convert the input string to 'int'
if x < 0:
We check if number is less then zero
if condition is true we print
print 'Be positive!'
note the indentation
elif x == 0:
This is else-if condition and corresponding message
end of previous indentation indicates ending of a block
print 'Zero'
elif x == 1:
print 'Single'
else:
This is else block which is executed when all if, and else
if statements fails.
print 'More'
Save this script in home folder with name '.py'
To run this script inside IPython we first start interpreter and
type
%run '.py'
It will prompt us to enter a integer and based on our input it
prints appropriate message.
Python supports only if-elif-else conditional constructs,
switch-case statements are not available/supported in Python.
We can use binary operators like and/or/not to check for multiple
conditions.
Now lets look at loop constructs available. Python supports 'while'
and 'for' statements. We will write a script to understand 'while'
statement. In Scite click on 'new' file shortcut to open a new tab
We shall write a script for printing all fabonacci numbers less then
10. In this series Sum of previous two elements defines the next
element.
First we initialize two variable to first and second number of
series
a, b = 0, 1
while b < 10:
This block will be executed till this condition holds True
print b,
Note ',' here for printing values in one continues line.
a, b = b, a+b
This is one powerful feature of Python, swapping and assigning
new values at the same time. After this statement a will have
present 'b' value and b will have value of 'a+b'(phew this can be close)
Save this file as 'fabonacci.py' and lets run it from IPython
interpreter by
%run fabonacci.py
'for' in python works any kind of iterable objects. In our
previous sessions we used 'for' to iterate through files and lists.
So in case we want to get square of say first five numbers using
'for' loop, we will have to create a list. For this we will use
'range' function available. Lets take a look at documentation
available for 'range' function by typing
range?
It takes three arguments, first being the start/initial value
second one being stop/last value and third being the step size.
Out of these 'start' and 'step' arguments are optional.
So if we use range to get first five number it would be
range(5)
Note here that last/stop value is not included in resulting
list. So to get square of first five number all we have to do is
iterate over this list.
for i in range(5):
....print i, i*i
....
....
Similarly to get square of all odd numbers from 3 to 9 we can do
something like
for i in range(3, 10, 2):
so the list returned from range this time will start from 3 and
end at 10(excluding it) with step size of 2 so we get odd numbers
only
....print i, i*i
....
....
That brings us to the end of this tutorial. We have covered solution
of linear equations, finding roots of polynomials and non-linear
equations. We have also learnt how to define functions and call
them.
Thank you!
*** Notes