> I need help on the SYNTAX of Python
>
> I have programming experience in Fortran and a little bit of C.
Ah, ok; let's see if we can transfer some concepts from your previous
experience into Python.
Just as a note: please use your email client's "Reply to All" feature so
that our correspondence stays on the Python-tutor mailing list. The idea
is that if I say something that is inaccurate or incomplete, the other
helpers can come and compensate for my weaknesses.
> I don't know how to get started.
>
> I've downloaded Python, and have used the idle as a desk calculator, but
> do not yet know how to write programs in it.
You may want to do a quick run-through of:
http://www.python.org/doc/tut/
which will help give you a better sense of the syntax of the language.
> Do you already know about conditionals?
>
> *******************
>
> I know about the == relational operator.
>
> ***************
Python has a familiar control-flow syntax for branches in the 'if'
statement. For example, here is an interactive session that shows how one
can use it for a simple case-analysis:
######
>>> def is_even(n):
... if n % 2 == 0: ## % is the modulo operator
... return "yes"
... else:
... return "no"
...
>>> is_even(42)
'yes'
>>> is_even(13)
'no'
######
This is a function that takes an argument 'n', and returns either a 'yes'
or 'no' output. If you look through a tutorial like the official Python
tutorial, you should see more usage of the "if" statement to handle an
arbitrary number of cases.
> Do you know how to test a function?
>
> Do you mean
> (1) call the function with test values to see if it performs the way you
> want it to?
> (2) something else that is Python related that I know nothing about?
#1. I was running under the assumption that you hadn't programmed before.
But since you have, I think you know how to test a program so that you
have a reasonable idea of how well a program is doing what you want.
> Please help me with the syntax. I don't know how to tell python to run
> a main program and use subroutines. I don't know how to make those
> subroutines available to the main program.
I think the best thing I can do is point you to tutorials that you can use
to get a handle for the syntax. There is:
http://www.python.org/doc/tut/
as I pointed to earlier, but there's also:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/Programmers
which are tutorials that are targetted toward people who already know how
to program.
If you have more questions, please feel free to email '[email protected]'.
Good luck!
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