Home Original page

I have tried and errored a reasonable amount of times

Cameron Simpson cs at zip.com.au
Sun Aug 31 01:30:26 EDT 2014 
On 30Aug2014 17:48, Seymore4Head <Seymore4Head at Hotmail.invalid> wrote:
>I have been told that one is a method and the other calls a method.  I
>still have to learn exactly what that means.  I'm getting there.

A method is, essentially, a function. Observe:

   def my_func(x):
     print(9)

my_func is just the name of the function, and .isupper is likewise just the 
name of the function that tests a string for uppercaseness.

Conversely, my_func() actually calls the function, and likewise .isupper() 
calls the test function, returning True or False depending on whether the 
string was uppercase or not.

A method versus a function? A method is a particular type of function. It is 
normally defined in a class, eg:

   class MyClass:

       def method_name_here(self, arg1, arg2):
         ... do something with self and arg1 and arg2 ...

When you have an object which is an instance of the class (let us call it "o"), 
when you call:

   o.method_name_here(1,2)

it invokes the function MyClass.method_name_here(o,1,2). So because the string 
"no" is an instance of str, the code:

   "no".isupper()

runs the function str.isupper("no"), which examines its argument for 
uppercaseness.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au>

Why is it so hard for people to simply leave people alone? But, the answer
comes to me: they are idiots and in a perfect world, I would be permitted to
kill them all.  - Julie Rhodes <jk.rhodes at asacomp.com>
More information about the Python-list mailing list