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Programming Assignment Unit 5
Md Khorshed Alam
University Of The People
CS 1101-01 Programming Fundamentals
Shanthini S
May 10, 2025
Programming Assignment Unit 5
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In this unit, we explored the fundamental concepts of Iterations and Strings in Python. This
program demonstrates three string operations using a user’s input name:
1. Displaying the first n characters from the left
2. Counting the number of vowels in the name
3. Reversing the name
Each operation is broken down into a separate function to make the code more modular and
reusable.
Python Code:
# Function to display n characters from the left
def display_left_chars(name, n):
return name[:n]
# Function to count vowels in the name
def count_vowels(name):
vowels = 'aeiou'
name = name.lower() # Convert the whole string to lowercase once
count = 0
for char in name:
if char in vowels:
count += 1
return count
# Function to reverse the name
def reverse_name(name):
return name[::-1]
# Main program
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name = input("Enter your name: ")
n = int(input("Enter number of characters to display from the left: "))
# Call and display results
print("First", n, "characters from the left:", display_left_chars(name, n))
print("Number of vowels in the name:", count_vowels(name))
print("Reversed name:", reverse_name(name))
Output:
Enter your name: Khorshed Alam
Enter number of characters to display from the left: 8
First 8 characters from the left: Khorshed
Number of vowels in the name: 4
Reversed name: malA dehsrohK
Explanation:
The revised program introduces modular programming using three well-defined functions:
display_left_chars(), count_vowels(), and reverse_name(). This structure aligns with the best
practices of breaking down a problem into smaller subproblems for clarity and maintainabil-
ity.
The function display_left_chars(name, n) uses string slicing to extract the first `n` characters
from the input name. It returns a substring starting from index 0 up to, but not including, in-
dex `n`.
The count_vowels(name) function counts how many vowels appear in the string. It iterates
over each character and checks its presence in the string 'aeiou'. It converts text to lowercase
first, ensuring case-insensitive counting.
The reverse_name(name) function returns the reversed string using Python’s slicing syntax
`[::-1]`, which effectively walks the string backward.
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Each function handles one task, making the code cleaner and easier to debug or expand. For
instance, if the program later needed to ignore whitespace or count only distinct vowels, these
changes could be confined to the count_vowels() function without affecting others.
This approach not only demonstrates an understanding of iterations and strings (Chapters 7 &
8 of Downey, 2015), but also encourages early habits in functional abstraction — a valuable
skill in computer science.
Program Screen:
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Output Screen:
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References
Downey, A. (2015). Think Python: How to think like a computer scientist (2nd ed.). Green
Tea Press. https://greenteapress.com/thinkpython2/thinkpython2.pdf
