Engineering #20: *for thing in things* needs to iterate! and a thanks to methods

And Lago-alba by Gerardo Dottori (1942)

Lago-alba (Gerardo Dottori, 1942)

You come across the following code. What errors does it raise for the given examples and what exactly do the error messages mean?

def find_first_nonzero_among(numbers):
    for n in numbers:
        if n != 0:
            return n

find_first_nonzero_among(0, 0, 1, 0, 2, 0)
find_first_nonzero_among(1)

Ahh, not sure… Okay, I looked at the answer: it’s passing raw integers rather than a list. Because we’re doing for n in numbers, we have to iterate over one thing of iterables. So this is fine:

find_first_nonzero_among([1])

It’s a list of one, but still a list; we can go “for 1 in [1]” on it. Link to Launch School exercise.

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I thought this was a good example of how much stuff methods (like .title) can simplify; solution one:

def capitalize_words(string):
    return string.title()

string = 'capitalize the first letter in each word & fast'
result = capitalize_words(string)

print(result) # Capitalize The First Letter In Each Word & Fast

Solution two, without .title:

def capitalize_words(string):
    words = string.split(' ')
    capitalized_words = []

    for word in words:
        capitalized_words.append(word.capitalize())

    return ' '.join(capitalized_words)

string = 'capitalize the first letter in each word & fast'
result = capitalize_words(string)

print(result) # Capitalize The First Letter In Each Word & Fast

Link to Launch School exercise.