Question

Can someone explain why this is an incorrect approach to find the value of a word in the scrabble exercise?
value_list = dict({'a': 1, 'b': 3, 'c': 3, 'd': 2, 'e': 1, 'f': 4, 'g': 2, 'h': 4, 'i': 1, 'j': 8, 'k': 5, 'l': 1, 'm': 3, 'n': 1, 'o': 1, 'p': 3, 'q': 10, 'r': 1, 's': 1, 't': 1, 'u': 1, 'v': 4, 'w': 4, 'x': 8, 'y': 4, 'z': 10})
word_index = 0
total = 0

def find_value(word):
global word_index
global total
x = word[word_index]
total = total + value_list[x]
if len(word) > word_index + 1:
word_index = word_index + 1
find_value(word)

Answer 1

As much as I like recursion, this is an iterative problem. I don't see any need or advantage for word_index and total to be global variables. They'd only be used in find_value().

def find_value( word ):
total = 0
for letter in word:
if( letter in value_list ):
total += value_list[ letter ]
return total