Author Archives: Manuel Madrigal

Range is a very useful built in function in Python. It allows us to create lists with arithmetic progressions.

The syntax is the following:

     range (start, stop, step)

Where the arguments have to be integer numbers. We can omit the “start” argument and Python sets it to 0 by default. We can also omit the “step” argument and it will be set to 1 by default.

It is also important to remark that the “stop” argument is never taken into account as part of the generated list.

Here are some examples:

>>range(5)

[0,1,2,3,4]

>>range(1,7)

[1,2,3,4,5,6]

>>range(20,100,10)

[20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90]

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In this post I will explain you what tuples are and how to use them.

If we remember from an old post, we saw that we could group items by using lists. Tuples are just like lists, but the main difference is that once you had created a Tuple, you can not modify it, as we could with lists.

The syntax of a Tuple, different from lists where we used brackets, is the following:

     Tuple=(item1,item2,item3,itemN)

Where item1, item2, item3 and itemN can take any value, it doesn’t matter if it is a string, integer number, or even a list or another tuple, etc.

We can refer to values of a tuple as we refer to values of a list. The syntax is the following:

>>Tuple[2]

item3

Where 2 referes to the third item because it starts counting from 0.

We may not be able to modify Tuples but we can always modify a list inside the tuple, as soon as we dont wanted to put up any other value instead of the list itself.

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Modules are Python files that contain pre-built functions that are very useful. Python already has some modules that come with it at the moment you download it but we can create our own modules too.

To create a modules we have to create a new file with the extension .py and save it on the main folder of python because there is where python looks after we call a function. The direction of this folder can be found on C:Python34 but this may be different depending on what version of Python you have.

In this file we have to create the functions that we are going to use after importing the module. If you dont know how to create a function you can check a post I did where I explain it in here: https://manuelmadrigal.withknown.com/2015/mastery12-creating-python-functions

After this file is created we have to import it in the new file where we want to use this functions. You can also check my post about Importing and using python modules in here: https://manuelmadrigal.withknown.com/2015/mastery13-importing-and-using-python-modules

If you want to learn more about Creatin and Using Python functions you can check this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRQA1Fy1HFQ

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Data-types are different types of ways we can store data. The most basic Data-types are the numbers (which we can divide in integers and Floating point numbers) and strings.

Numbers:

>>>An integer is a whole number form the range of negative infinity to infinity, e.g., -5, 0, 17, etc.

>>>A floating point number is any number that has digits after a decimal point, e.g., 2.4, 132.8441, 3.333, etc.

Strings:

A string is a piece of text that can be a set of letters, numbers or other characters. To include a string in our program, we have to sorround it with quotes or double quotes. e.g.:

>>> x= “This is a string with double quotes”

>>> y= ‘This is a string with simple quotes’

And the work exactly the same.

There are some more complex Data-types such lists, tuples and dictionaries.

Lists:

A list stores a bunch of values and keeps them in order for the user; the user can add, delete or modify any item from the list whenever he wants. A list doesnt have a fixed number of values, the user can modify it as he wants. Lists are characterized because of the square brackets. For example:

x=[1,2,3,4,5]

Tuples:

Tuples are a lot like lists but the do have a fixed number of values that can not be modified. Different from lists, tuples are defined with parentheses instead of square brackets. For example:

x=(1,2,3,4,5)

Dictionaries:

Dictionaries contain a key and a value, so ypu can look up for the value later using the key. We can use dictionaries to build complex nested data structures or just to store values. The syntax is the following:

x={‘key1’: ‘value1’, ‘key2’: ‘value2’}

You can learn more about data-types in here: http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/articles/python_datatypes.shtml

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To submit work via Blog RSS I selected withknown which seems a pretty good Blog. So far it has been very easy to use and it looks very clean with a good interface.

To submit work via Github we have to install the client in our computer, which can be downloaded for free direclty from their page. Also we have to create a repositorie to submit our python programs. Once it is installed we just have to place our work in the corresponding folder and and synchronize the repositorie on the github client.

Here is a video from our professor where is explained better: http://youtu.be/YQmlksGFZWY

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