Lab 1: Expressions and Control Structures
Due at 11:59pm on 09/03/2015.
Starter Files
Download lab01.zip. Inside the archive, you will find starter files for the questions in this lab, along with a copy of the OK autograder.
Submission
By the end of this lab, you should have submitted the lab with
python3 ok --submit
. You may submit more than once before the
deadline; only the final submission will be graded.
- Questions 1, 2, 4, and 5 (What Would Python Print?) are designed to help introduce concepts and test your understanding.
- For the purpose of tracking participation, please complete at least questions 3 and 6 in lab01.py. Submit using OK.
- Questions 7, 8, and 9 are completely optional coding practice. Question 7 is in lab01.py and Questions 8 and 9 are in lab01_extra.py. It is recommended that you complete these problems on your own time.
Using Your Class Account
You should have received your class account info (with a username of the form
cs61a-xxx
) by email. These accounts allow you to use instructional machines in the CS department and are useful if you do not have regular access to a computer. They are not required for CS 61A. See the section Using your class account for details.
This guide explains the basics of using the lab computers and how to use the terminal.
Using Python
When running a Python file, you can use flags on the command line to inspect your code further. Here are a few that will come in handy. If you want to learn more about other Python flags, take a look at the documentation.
Using no flags will run the code in the file you provide and return you to the command line.
python3 lab01.py
-i
: The-i
option runs your Python script, then opens an interactive session. To exit, typeexit()
into the interpreter prompt. You can also use the keyboard shortcutCtrl-D
on Linux/Mac machines orCtrl-Z Enter
on Windows.If you edit the Python file while running it interactively, you will need to exit and restart the interpreter in order for those changes to take effect.
python3 -i lab01.py
-m doctest
: Runs doctests in a particular file. Doctests are marked by triple quotes ("""
) and are usually located within functions.python3 -m doctest lab01.py
Using OK
In 61A, we use a program called OK for autograding labs, homeworks, and projects. You should have downloaded ok at the start of this lab in the zip file. You can use ok to run doctests for a specified function. For example,
python3 ok -q factors
By default, only errors will show up. You can use the -v
option to
show all tests, including successful ones:
python3 ok -v
Finally, when you have finished all the questions in
lab01.py, you must submit the assignment using the
--submit
option:
python3 ok --submit
Division
Let's compare the different division-related operators in Python:
True Division (decimal division) The / Operator |
Floor Division (integer division) The // Operator |
Modulo (similar to a remainder) The % Operator |
---|---|---|
|
|
|
One useful technique involving the %
operator is to check
whether a number x
is divisible by another number y
:
x % y == 0
For example, in order to check if x
is an even number:
x % 2 == 0
Boolean Operators
Python supports three boolean operators: and
, or
, and not
:
>>> a = 4
>>> a < 2 and a > 0
False
>>> a < 2 or a > 0
True
>>> not (a > 0)
False
and
evaluates toTrue
only if both operands evaluate toTrue
. If at least one operand isFalse
, thenand
evaluates toFalse
.or
evaluates toTrue
if at least one operand evaluates toTrue
. If all operands areFalse
, thenor
evaluates toFalse
.
What do you think the following expression evaluates to? Try it out in the Python interpreter.
>>> True and not False or not True and False
It is difficult to read complex expressions, like the one above, and understand how a program will behave. Using parentheses can make your code easier to understand. Just so you know, Python interprets that expression in the following way:
>>> (True and (not False)) or ((not True) and False)
This is because boolean operators, like arithmetic operators, have an order of operation:
not
has the highest priorityand
or
has the lowest priority
It turns out and
and or
work on more than just booleans (True
,
False
). Other Python values can be considered "false-y," including 0
,
None
, and ''
(the empty string). All other values are considered "truth-y."
Question 1: WWPP: Truthiness
Use OK to test your knowledge with the following "What Would Python Print?" questions:
python3 ok -q truthiness -u
>>> 0 or True
______True
>>> not '' or not 0 and False
______True
>>> 13 and False
______False
Short Circuiting
What do you think will happen if we type the following into Python?
1 / 0
Try it out in Python! You should see a ZeroDivisionError
. But what about this expression?
True or 1 / 0
It evaluates to True
because Python's and
and or
operators short-circuit. That is, they don't necessarily evaluate every operand.
Operator | Evaluates from left to right until: | Example |
---|---|---|
AND | The first "false-y" value | False and 1 / 0 evaluates to False |
OR | The first "truth-y" value | True or 1 / 0 evaluates to True |
If and
and or
do not short-circuit, they just return the last
value. This means that and
and or
don't always return booleans when using truth-y
and false-y values.
Question 2: WWPP: Veritasiness
Use OK to test your knowledge with the following "What Would Python Print?" questions:
python3 ok -q short_circuiting -u
Hint: If an error occurs, write Error.
>>> True and 13
______13
>>> False or 0
______0
>>> not 10
______False
>>> not None
______True
>>> True and 1 / 0 and False
______Error (ZeroDivisionError)
>>> True or 1 / 0 or False
______True
>>> True and 0
______0
>>> False or 1
______1
>>> 1 and 3 and 6 and 10 and 15
______15
>>> 0 or False or 2 or 1 / 0
______2
Question 3: Fix the Bug
The following snippet of code doesn't work! Figure out what is wrong and fix the bugs.
def both_positive(x, y):
"""Returns True if both x and y are positive.
>>> both_positive(-1, 1)
False
>>> both_positive(1, 1)
True
"""
return x and y > 0 # You can replace this line!
return x > 0 and y > 0
The original line (return x and y > 0
) will check that two things are
true:
x
y > 0
When will x
be considered True? In Python, any number that is not 0
is considered True. Thus, the first doctest will fail: x = -1
and -1 != 0
, and y = 1 > 0
, so both clauses are True.
Use OK to test your code:
python3 ok -q both_positive
If Statements
You can review the syntax of if
statements in
Section 1.5.4
of Composing Programs.
Hint: We sometimes see code that looks like this:
if x > 3: return True else: return False
This can be written more concisely as
return x > 3
. If your code looks like the code above, see if you can rewrite it more clearly!
Question 4: WWPP: What If?
Use OK to test your knowledge with the following "What Would Python Print?" questions:
python3 ok -q what_if -u
The functions below are already defined in lab01.py
. If you get stuck, try
python3 -i lab01.py
and experiment.
>>> def xk(c, d):
... if c == 4:
... return 6
... elif d >= 4:
... return 6 + 7 + c
... else:
... return 25
>>> xk(10, 10)
______23
>>> xk(10, 6)
______23
>>> xk(4, 6)
______6
>>> xk(0, 0)
______25
>>> def how_big(x):
... if x > 10:
... print('huge')
... elif x > 5:
... return 'big'
... elif x > 0:
... print('small')
... else:
... print("nothin'")
>>> how_big(7)
______'big'
>>> how_big(12)
______huge
>>> how_big(1)
______small
>>> how_big(-1)
______nothin'
>>> def so_big(x):
... if x > 10:
... print('huge')
... if x > 5:
... return 'big'
... if x > 0:
... print('small')
... print("nothin'")
>>> so_big(7)
______'big'
>>> so_big(12)
______huge
'big'
>>> so_big(1)
______small
nothin'
Hint:
return
) does not cause the function to exit!
While Loops
You can review the syntax of while
loops in
Section 1.5.5
of Composing Programs.
Question 5: WWPP: Loops
Use OK to test your knowledge with the following "What Would Python Print?" questions:
python3 ok -q loops -u
>>> n = 3
>>> while n >= 0:
... n -= 1
... print(n)
______2
1
0
-1
Hint: Make sure your
while
loop conditions eventually become false-y, or they'll never stop! TypingCtrl-C
will stop infinite loops in the interpreter.
>>> n = 4
>>> while n > 0:
... n += 1
... print(n)
______5
6
7
# continues forever
>>> def go(n):
... if n % 2 != 0:
... print(n / 2)
... return
... while n > 0:
... print(n)
... n = n // 2
>>> go(4)
______4
2
1
>>> go(5)
______2.5
Here's some food for thought: is it possible for a program to detect if there is an infinite loop in any program? Put another way, can you create a program that determines if another program will halt?
Error Messages
By now, you've probably seen a couple of error messages. They might look intimidating, but error messages are very helpful for debugging code. The following are some common types of errors:
Error Types | Descriptions |
---|---|
SyntaxError | Contained improper syntax (e.g. missing a colon after an if statement or forgetting to close parentheses/quotes) |
IndentationError | Contained improper indentation (e.g. inconsistent indentation of a function body) |
TypeError | Attempted operation on incompatible types (e.g. trying to add a function and a number) or called function with the wrong number of arguments |
ZeroDivisionError | Attempted division by zero |
Using these descriptions of error messages, you should be able to get a better idea of what went wrong with your code. If you run into error messages, try to identify the problem before asking for help. You can often Google unfamiliar error messages to see if others have made similar mistakes to help you debug.
For example:
>>> square(3, 3)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: square() takes 1 positional argument but 2 were given
Note:
- The last line of an error message tells us the type of the error. In the
example above, we have a
TypeError
. - The error message tells us what we did wrong — we gave
square
2 arguments when it can only take in 1 argument. In general, the last line is the most helpful. - The second to last line of the error message tells us on which line the
error occurred. This helps us track down he error. In the example above,
TypeError
occurred atline 1
.
I Want to Play a Game
Now that you have learned about call expressions and control structures, you can code an algorithm! An algorithm is a set of steps to accomplish a task. You use algorithms every day — from adding numbers by hand to getting to your next lecture.
Let's play a number guessing game with Python! Pick a number and Python will guess randomly until it guesses correctly.
All the code for this guessing game will be in lab01.py
. In your terminal,
start an interactive session with Python:
$ python3 -i lab01.py
The guess_random
function will prompt you for a number, ask if its guess is
correct (many times) and return the number of guesses Python had to make. To
tell Python if its guess is correct, just enter y
at the [y/n]
prompt. If
it's wrong, enter n
. Python isn't very good at guessing yet, so if it's
taking too long, you can type Ctrl-C
to make it stop.
>>> guess_random()
Pick an integer between 1 and 10 (inclusive) for me to guess: 7
Is 1 your number? [y/n] n
Is 5 your number? [y/n] n
...
Randomly guessing works, but you can create an even better guessing strategy.
Question 6: Guess Linear
One weakness in the guess_random
strategy is that it can repeat (incorrect)
guesses. Rather than guessing wildly, let's guess numbers in increasing order.
Note:
is_correct
is a function that will returnTrue
if the guess matches the correct number. Feel free to reference the implementation ofguess_random
as you implementguess_linear
.
def guess_linear():
"""Guess in increasing order and return the number of guesses."""
prompt_for_number(LOWER, UPPER)
num_guesses = 1
guess = LOWER
"*** YOUR CODE HERE ***"
while not is_correct(guess):
guess += 1
num_guesses += 1 return num_guesses
The best way to test this function is by playing with it interactively. See if your algorithm does what you expect!
Question 7: Guess Binary
Challenge question. The guess_linear
function can take a long time if
your number is large. However, a strategy called binary search can find the
correct number faster. The idea is to start in the middle of the range and
after each incorrect guess ask if the guess is_too_high
or too low. Either
way, you can eliminate half the remaining possible guesses.
Hint: Try using the
is_too_high
function to implement a faster strategy.is_too_high
will returnTrue
if the guess is greater than the correct number.>>> result = is_too_high(5) Is 5 too high? [y/n] y >>> result True
Hint: You may want to update other variables besides
guess
.
def guess_binary():
"""Return the number of attempted guesses. Implement a faster search
algorithm that asks the user whether a guess is less than or greater than
the correct number.
Hint: If you know the guess is greater than the correct number, then your
algorithm doesn't need to try numbers that are greater than guess.
"""
prompt_for_number(LOWER, UPPER)
num_guesses = 1
lower, upper = LOWER, UPPER
guess = (lower + upper) // 2
"*** YOUR CODE HERE ***"
while not is_correct(guess):
if is_too_high(guess):
upper = guess - 1
else:
lower = guess + 1
guess = (lower + upper) // 2
num_guesses += 1 return num_guesses
If you choose a number between 1 and 10, this approach should need no more than 4 guesses to find your number.
The best way to test this function is by playing it interactively. Try to think
of edge cases — numbers that might cause your algorithm to do the wrong
thing. If you edit the Python file while running it interactively, you will
need to exit()
and restart the interpreter in order for those changes to take
effect.
So far, your algorithms have only had to find a number between 1 and 10. What if we expanded the possible range of numbers to be between 1 and 100? How many guesses would each algorithm make if you picked 100 to be your number?
A Second Look
Let's try to visualize the two algorithms you've just written! We've provided code that will run each algorithm 1000 times and plot the number of guesses the algorithms had to make. The numbers are randomly chosen from between 1 and 100.
$ python3 guessing_game_graph.py guess_linear
$ python3 guessing_game_graph.py guess_binary
Each bar represents the number of guesses the algorithm took to find the
correct number. The height of each bar represents the frequency of each number
of guesses. Look carefully at the axes when comparing the two graphs! You
should see that guess_linear
sometimes took up to 100 guesses; what was the
highest number of guesses that guess_binary
took?
You can see our plots for guess_linear and guess_binary. If your plots only have one bar, make sure your functions are returning the correct number of guesses!
Before you dive into the extra questions, be sure to run python3 ok --submit
!
Coding Practice
The code for this section can be found in lab01_extra.py.
It's ok if you don't finish these questions during lab. However, we strongly encourage you to try them out on your own time for extra practice.
Question 8: Factor This!
Implement a function factors
which takes in a number n
and prints out (in
descending order) all of the numbers that divide n
evenly. For example, the
factors of 20 are 20, 10, 5, 4, 2, 1.
def factors(n):
"""Prints out all of the numbers that divide `n` evenly.
>>> factors(20)
20
10
5
4
2
1
"""
"*** YOUR CODE HERE ***"
x = n
while x > 0:
if n % x == 0:
print(x)
x -= 1
Use OK to test your code:
python3 ok -q factors
Question 9: Falling factorial
Let's write a function falling
, which is a "falling" factorial
that takes two arguments, n
and k
, and returns the product of k
consecutive numbers, starting from n
and working downwards.
def falling(n, k):
"""Compute the falling factorial of n to depth k.
>>> falling(6, 3) # 6 * 5 * 4
120
>>> falling(4, 0)
1
>>> falling(4, 3) # 4 * 3 * 2
24
>>> falling(4, 1) # 4
4
"""
"*** YOUR CODE HERE ***"
total, stop = 1, n-k
while n > stop:
total, n = total*n, n-1
return total
Use OK to test your code:
python3 ok -q falling
Appendix: Using your class account
If you plan to use your own laptop for this class, you can ignore this appendix.
Logging into your class account
From your laptop
At the start of your first lab section, you should have received a class account form. At the top left of the form should be your username and your temporary password:
Login: cs61a-aaa
Password: ...
Most of the work in this class can be done without logging into your account. However, there may be times when you'll find working from an instructional account to be easier.
Let's login in now. Open up your terminal and type in the following command:
ssh cs61a-?@cory.eecs.berkeley.edu
where ?
is replaced with the rest of your username.
If you're interested, here's an explanation of what the command does:
ssh
is a secure shell (i.e. terminal) that connects to other computers over a network.cs61a-?
is the username on the remote computer.cory.eecs.berkeley.edu
is the domain name of the remote computer. For our purposes it can be any of the servers that belong to Berkeley's CS department.
You can also watch this video for help.
The first time you attempt to ssh
to a new server, the following message will
appear:
The authenticity of host 'cory.eecs.berkeley.edu' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is ...
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?
Say yes. Your computer will remember the remote server, and won't ask you again.
Once you confirm, you will be prompted for your password. If you haven't changed your password yet, use the temporary password printed on your class account form.
When you type your password, nothing will show up! This is a security feature, not a bug. Continue typing and press enter to login.
From an instructional machine
Most of our instructional computers use Ubuntu, a version of the Linux operating system. To login, just find lab computer and enter your username and password.
Once you login, you'll want to open a terminal. On Ubuntu, you can open a
terminal with Ctrl-Alt-T
.
Changing your password
The temporary password is not the easiest thing to remember. While still logged in, you should change with the command:
ssh update
Registering your account
The first time you login to your class account, your terminal will ask you some registration questions about the following:
- Last name
- First name
- Student ID
- Email (please use your berkeley.edu email!)
- Code name (we don't use this information, you can enter anything you want)
If your terminal doesn't prompt you for this information the first time you login, you can type
register
to begin the process. You don't need to do this again if you've already registered before.
If you find errors (e.g. you typed your last name as "ssh update"), fix them immediately by running the command:
re-register
Logging out
Once you've registered your account and changed your password, you can
log out by pressing Ctrl-D
, or with the command exit
.