I'd like to learn how to pass an arbitrary number of args in a python function, so I wrote a simple sum function in a recursive way as follows:
def mySum(*args):
if len(args) == 1:
return args[0]
else:
return args[-1] + mySum(args[:-1])
but when I tested mySum(3, 4), I got this error:
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'tuple'
Does anyone have an idea about this and gimme some clue to correct it?
This line:
return args[-1] + mySum(args[:-1])
args[:-1] returns a slice of the arguments tuple. I assume your goal is to recursively call your function using that slice of the arguments. Unfortunately, your current code simply calls your function using a single object - the slice itself.
What you want to do instead is to call with those args unrolled.
return args[-1] + mySum(*args[:-1])
^---- note the asterisk
This technique is called "unpacking argument lists," and the asterisk is sometimes (informally) called the "splat" operator.
If you don't want to do it recursively:
def mySum(*args):
sum = 0
for i in args:
sum = sum + i
return sum
args[:-1] is a tuple, so the nested call is actually mySum((4,)), and the nested return of args[0] returns a tuple. So you end up with the last line being reduced to return 3 + (4,). To fix this you need to expand the tuple when calling mySum by changing the last line to return args[-1] + mySum(*args[:-1]).
In your code, args[:-1] is a tuple, so mySum(args[:-1]) is being called with the args being a tuple containing another tuple as the first argument. You want to call the function mySum with args[:-1] expanded to the arguments however, which you can do with
mySum(*args[:-1])
The arbitrary arguments are passed as tuple (with one asterisk*) to the function, (you can change it to a list as shown in the code) and calculate the sum of its elements, by coding yourself using a for loop; if don't want to use the sum() method of python.
def summing(*arg):
li = list(*arg)
x = 0
for i in range((len(li)-1)):
x = li[i]+x
return x
#creating a list and pass it as arbitrary argument to the function
#to colculate the sum of it's elements
li = [4, 5 ,3, 24, 6, 67, 1]
print summing(li)
Option1:
def mySum(*args):
return sum(args)
mySum(1,2,3) # 6
mySum(1,2) # 3
Option 2:
mySum2 = lambda *args: sum(args)
mySum2(1,2,3) # 6
mySum2(1,2) # 3
