Baba a écrit :
level: beginner
the following code looks ok to me but it doesn't work.
"doesn't work" is about the most useless description of a problem.
Please specify what you expected and what actually happens.
I would like
some hints as to where my reasoning / thought goes wrong
def i_palindrome(pal):
while len(pal)>1:
if pal[0] == pal[-1]:
pal=pal[1:-1]
Can you explain what happens if pal[0] != pal[-1] ? (answer below)
return True
print i_palindrome('annab')
And then you go in an infinite loop !-)
my reasoning:
- i check the length of the string: if > 1 continue
- i check first and last char: if they are equal continue
- create a new, shorter string starting at index 1 and ending at
second last index (up to but not including index-1
-restart the while loop as long as length of string is > 1
- exiting this loop means all compared chars were identical hence it
is a palindrome and i return True
Your problem is that when first and last char are not equal, you don't
exit the while loop. You need a "return False" somewhere here, ie:
def is_palindrom(pal):
while len(pal)>1:
# NB : inverted the test here to make exit more obvious
if pal[0] != pal[-1]:
return False
pal=pal[1:-1]
return True
Now there is another solution. A palindrom is made of two symetric
halves, with (odd len) or without (even len) a single char between the
symetric halves, ie :
* odd : ABCBA ('AB' + 'C' + 'BA')
* even : ABCCBA ('ABC' + 'CBA')
So you just have to extract the symetric halves, reverse one, and
compare both (case insensitive compare while we're at it). Here's a
possible (and a bit tricky) Python 2.x implementation:
def is_palindrom(s):
s = s.lower()
slen = len(s)
until = slen / 2 # Python 2x integer division
offset = int(not(slen % 2))
runtil = until - offset
return s[0:until] == s[-1:runtil:-1]
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