Question

I managed to get the cipher script working in optional exercise 2 in http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-189-a-gentle-introduction-to-programming-using-python-january-iap-2011/assignments/MIT6_189IAP11_hw1.pdf

https://gist.github.com/3802851

But it seems like I'm repeated myself a lot in the code. Any suggestions for simplifying?

Answer 1

There are two ways I've written this:

http://pastebin.com/Bt0FkzGw

With the first, I rewrote it completely myself with the goal of writing it with no other function dependencies than ord and chr, while still being readable

With the second, I used your code and moved the repeated code into a function. Read over each and see which style you like best.

Answer 2

Wow, thatnks, there's a lot of food for though there. I was a little hamstrung because I haven't gotten to the part of the course on functions yet.

I actually really like the fist version you did, because I think the code is much more readable. The if... In construct seems really useful, and probably would have made some of my earlier programs easier to read.

I've never seen %= before. Is that a common operator?

Answer 3

Is this the point at which I fess up that I skipped the optionals? ; )

Answer 4

I don't know any languages that have += that don't have %=, if that's what you mean.

Either way, %= isn't something I use often. Usually when you want to mod something, you can put the mod somewhere else (just add it to the end of another line).