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Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 02:31:57 +0100
From: MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com>
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Subject: Re: I am out of trial and error again  Lists
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On 2014-10-23 01:10, Seymore4Head wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2014 11:05:08 +1100, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:
>
>>Seymore4Head wrote:
>>
>>> Those string errors were desperate attempts to fix the "append" error
>>> I didn't understand.
>>
>>Ah, the good ol' "make random changes to the code until the error goes away"
>>technique. You know that it never works, right?
>>
>>Start by *reading the error message*, assuming you're getting an error
>>message. I'm the first person to admit that Python's error messages are not
>>always as clear as they should be, especially syntax errors, but still
>>there is a lot of information that can be gleamed from most error messages.
>>Take this attempt to use append:
>>
>>py> mylist.append(23)
>>Traceback (most recent call last):
>>  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
>>NameError: name 'mylist' is not defined
>>
>>That tells me that I have forgotten to define a variable mylist. So I fix
>>that:
>>
>>py> mylist = 23
>>py> mylist.append(23)
>>Traceback (most recent call last):
>>  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
>>AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'append'
>>
>>
>>That tells me that I can't append to a int. After googling for "Python
>>append" I learn that I can append to a list, so I try again:
>>
>>py> mylist = []
>>py> mylist.append(23)
>>py> print(mylist)
>>[23]
>>
>>
>>Success!
>>
>>If you are familiar with other programming languages, it might help to think
>>of append() as being like a procedure in Pascal, for example. You call
>>append() with an argument, but don't expect a return result.
>>
>>Technically, *all* functions and methods in Python return something, even if
>>just the special value None, which can lead to "Gotchas!" like this one:
>>
>>py> mylist = mylist.append(42)  # Don't do this!
>>py> print(mylist)  # I expect [23, 42] but get None instead.
>>None
>>
>>Oops. One of the small annoyances of Python is that there is no way to tell
>>ahead of time, except by reading the documentation, whether something is a
>>proper function that returns a useful value, or a procedure-like function
>>that returns None. That's just something you have to learn.
>>
>>The interactive interpreter is your friend. Learn to experiment at the
>>interactive interpreter -- you do know how to do that, don't you? If not,
>>ask. At the interactive interpreter, if a function or method returns a
>>value, it will be printed, *except for None*. So a function that doesn't
>>print anything might be procedure-like, and one which does print something
>>might not be:
>>
>>py> mylist = [1, 5, 2, 6, 4, 3]
>>py> sorted(mylist)  # proper function returns a value
>>[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
>>py> mylist.sort()  # procedure-like function returns None
>>py> print(mylist)  # and modifies the list in place
>>[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
>
> I am going to get around to learning the interpreter soon.
>
Why wait?

You're trying to learn the language _now_, and checking things
interactively will help you.