ChrisPython’s built-in getattr(object, string) function returns the value of the object‘s attribute with name string. If this doesn’t exist, it returns the value provided as an optional third default argument. If that doesn’t exist either, it raises an AttributeError. An example is getattr(porsche, ‘speed’) which is equivalent to porsche.speed. Usage Learn by example! Here’s an … Read more
Python’s built-in setattr(object, string, value) function takes three arguments: an object, a string, and an arbitrary value. It sets the attribute given by the string on the object to the specified value. After calling the function, there’s a new or updated attribute at the given instance, named and valued as provided in the arguments. For … Read more
Python’s built-in delattr() function takes an object and an attribute name as arguments and removes the attribute from the object. The call delattr(object, ‘attribute’) is semantically identical to del object.attribute. This article shows you how to use Python’s built-in delattr() function. Usage Learn by example! Here’s an example on how to use the delattr() built-in … Read more
Thanks for being an active member of our exclusive club of lifelong learners. ?? We’re so grateful for all the time you spend learning and improving your skills. Please be assured—for all the trust, time, and effort you put into Finxter, we’re never going to let you down. The team of Finxter Creators is here … Read more
If you’re like me, you love those TLDR; overviews to grasp the big picture quickly. Here is mine about Python’s compile() function: Python’s built-in compile() method returns an executable code object as an “Abstract Syntax Tree” represented as an ast object. By passing this code object into the exec() or eval() functions, you can run … Read more
This tutorial shows you how to use Python’s built-in eval() function. Why Using It? The main application of eval() is to take user input at runtime and run it as a Python expression. This way, you can create a calculator or allow users to perform custom computations on a computing cluster. However, this use also … Read more
The bubble sort does exactly what you’d expect it to do. It sorts an input list by treating each element as a bubble that climbs up the list. Each bubble rises as long as it is greater than the list elements. If a list element is smaller or equal to a list element, the bubble … Read more
The following is a conversation with an AI assistant. The assistant is helpful, creative, clever, and very friendly. Human: Hello, who are you? AI: I am an AI created by OpenAI. How can I help you today? Human: My name is Chris, and I’d love to teach people to code. AI: I would recommend the … Read more
The reference count is the number of times an object is referenced by a variable. If an object isn’t referenced anymore, it can be safely removed from the memory—what’s the use of an object nobody cares for anyway? This article shows you how to count the number of references to a Python object. What’s the … Read more
Challenge: How to find an element in a sorted matrix where row and column values increase monotonically? What is a matrix? A matrix is a table of values consisting of rows and columns. Here, we represent the matrix as a list of integer lists. Hence, we can access matrix values with the indexing and slicing … Read more
This tutorial shows you the meaning of captive user interfaces and why they’re discouraged under the Unix philosophy. I’ve written this as a first chapter draft for my upcoming book “From One to Zero” to appear in 2020 with San Francisco-based publisher NoStarch. What’s a Captive User Interface (CUI)? A captive user interface is a … Read more
The Fibonacci series was discovered by the Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci in 1202 and even earlier by Indian mathematicians. The series appears in unexpected areas such as economics, mathematics, art, and nature. Algorithm Sketch In the following, we give a simple algorithm to calculate the Fibonacci numbers. The series starts with the Fibonacci numbers zero … Read more