ADITYA ENGINEERING COLLEGE (A)

PYTHON PROGRAMMING
(191ES3T11)
By

Mr. B. Vinay Kumar

Dept. of Information Technology
Aditya Engineering College(A)
Surampalem.
 Aditya Engineering College (A)

UNIT III

Functions Modules

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Contents:

• Functions: Function Parameters, Local variables, the global statement,

Default Argument values, Keyword Arguments, VarArgs parameters, the
return statement. Anonymous Functions (lambda), Doc strings.

• Modules: The from import statement, A module’s name, Making your

own modules, the dir function, packages.

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Introduction
• A function is a block of code which only runs when it is called.
• You can pass data, known as parameters, into a function.
• A function can return data as a result.
• In Python, a function is a group of related statements that performs a specific
task.
• Functions help break our program into smaller and modular chunks. As our
program grows larger and larger, functions make it more organized and
manageable.
• Furthermore, it avoids repetition and makes the code reusable.

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 Syntax of Function Aditya Engineering College (A)

def function_name(parameters):
"""docstring"""
statement(s)
• Above shown is a function definition that consists of the following components.
• Keyword def that marks the start of the function header.
• A function_name to uniquely identify the function. Function naming follows the same
rules of writing identifiers in Python.
• Parameters (arguments) through which we pass values to a function. They are optional.
• A colon (:) to mark the end of the function header.
• Optional documentation string (docstring) to describe what the function does.
• One or more valid python statements that make up the function body. Statements must have
the same indentation level (usually 4 spaces).
• An optional return statement to return a value from the function.
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Example of a function
def greet(name):
""" This function greets to the person
passed in as a parameter """
print("Hello, " + name + ". Good morning!")

>>> dir(__builtins__)

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How to call a function in python?

• Once we have defined a function, we can call it from another function,
program or even the Python prompt.
• To call a function we simply type the function name with appropriate
parameters.
>>> greet('Paul')
Hello, Paul. Good morning!

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Function Parameters
• A function can take parameters, which are values you supply to the function
so that the function can do something utilizing those values.
• These parameters are just like variables except that the values of these
variables are defined when we call the function and are already assigned
values when the function runs.
• Parameters are specified within the pair of parentheses in the function
definition, separated by commas.
• When we call the function, we supply the values in the same way.
• Note the terminology used - the names given in the function definition are
called parameters whereas the values you supply in the function call are
called arguments.
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Types Of Python Function Arguments

• There are four types of Python Functions.

• Required arguments (Positional Arguments)

• Keyword arguments
• Default arguments
• Variable-length Arguments (varArgs).

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Required arguments
• Required arguments are the arguments passed to a function in correct
positional order. Here, the number of arguments in the function call should
match exactly with the function definition.
def printme( str ):
"This prints a passed string into this function"
print(str)
printme() # Now you can call printme function
• To call the function printme(), you definitely need to pass one argument,
otherwise it gives a syntax error.

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Keyword arguments
• If you have some functions with many parameters and you want to specify
only some of them, then you can give values for such parameters by naming
them - this is called keyword arguments - we use the name (keyword)
instead of the position (which we have been using all along) to specify the
arguments to the function.

• The idea is to allow caller to specify argument name with values so that
caller does not need to remember order of parameters.

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function_keyword.py

def func(a, b=5, c=10):

print ('a is', a, 'and b is', b, 'and c is', c)

func(3, 7)
func(25, c=24)
func(c=50, a=100)

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Default Argument Values

• For some functions, you may want to make some parameters optional and use
default values in case the user does not want to provide values for them.
• Note that the default argument value should be a constant. More precisely, the
default argument value should be immutable.

def say(message, times=1):

print (message * times)
say('Hello')
say('World', 5)

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VarArgs parameters
• Sometimes you might want to define a function that can take any number of
parameters, i.e. variable number of arguments, this can be achieved by using
the stars.

• We can have both normal and keyword variable number of arguments

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function_varargs.py
# Python program to illustrate
# *argv for variable number of arguments
def myFun(*argv):
for arg in argv:
print (arg)

myFun('Hello', 'Welcome', 'to', 'Aditya')

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# Python program to illustrate

# **args for variable number of keyword arguments
def myFun(**args):
for key, value in args.items():
print ("%s = %s" %(key, value))

# Driver code
myFun(first ='Aditya', mid ='Engg.', last='College')

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• When we declare a starred parameter such as *param , then all the

positional arguments from that point till the end are collected as a
tuple called 'param'.
• Similarly, when we declare a double-starred parameter such as
**param , then all the keyword arguments from that point till the end
are collected as a dictionary called 'param'.

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Decorators in Python
• Python has an interesting feature called decorators to add functionality to
an existing code.
• This is also called metaprogramming because a part of the program tries
to modify another part of the program at compile time.
• Everything in Python (Yes! Even classes), are objects.
• Functions are no exceptions, they are objects too (with attributes).
• Various different names can be bound to the same function object.

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• Here is an example.
def first(msg):
print(msg)
>>> first("Hello")
>>> second = first
>>> second("Hello")
Output
• Hello
• Hello
• When you run the code, both functions first and second give the same
output. Here, the names first and second refer to the same function
object.
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 Higher order functions Aditya Engineering College (A)

• Functions that take other functions as arguments are also called higher order functions.
• Ex: map, filter and reduce
def inc(x):
return x + 1
def dec(x):
return x - 1
def operate(func, x):
result = func(x)
return result
• We invoke the function as follows.
>>> operate(inc,3)
4
>>> operate(dec,3)
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• Furthermore, a function can return another function.

def is_called():
def is_returned():
print("Hello")
return is_returned
>>> new = is_called() # Outputs "Hello"
>>> new()
Here, is_returned() is a nested function which is defined and returned
each time we call is_called().
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Inner Functions
def parent():
print("Printing from the parent() function")
def first_child():
print("Printing from the first_child() function")
def second_child():
print("Printing from the second_child() function")
second_child()
first_child()
>>> parent()

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First-Class Objects
• In Python, functions are first-class objects. This means that functions can be passed
around and used as arguments, just like any other object (string, int
, float, list, and so on). Consider the following three functions:
def say_hello(name):
return f"Hello {name}"
def be_awesome(name):
return f"Yo {name}, together we are the awesomest!"
def greet_bob(greeter_func):
return greeter_func("Bob")
>>> greet_bob(say_hello)
'Hello Bob'
>>> greet_bob(be_awesome)
'Yo Python
Bob,Programming
together we are the awesomest!'
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 Returning Functions From Functions Aditya Engineering College (A)

def parent(num):
def first_child():
return "Hi, I am Emma"
def second_child():
return "Call me Liam"
if num == 1:
return first_child
else: return second_child
>>> first = parent(1)
>>> second = parent(2)
>>> first()
'Hi, I am Emma'
>>>
Python second()
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• In fact, any object which implements the special __call__() method is

termed callable. So, in the most basic sense, a decorator is a callable
that returns a callable.
• Basically, a decorator takes in a function, adds some functionality and
returns it.
def make_pretty(func):
def inner():
print("I got decorated")
func()
return inner
def ordinary():
print("I am ordinary")
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When you run the following codes in shell,

>>> ordinary()
I am ordinary
>>> # let's decorate this ordinary function
>>> pretty = make_pretty(ordinary)
>>> pretty()
I got decorated
I am ordinary

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Local Variables

• When you declare variables inside a function definition, they are not
related in any way to other variables with the same names used outside
the function - i.e. variable names are local to the function.
• This is called the scope of the variable.
• All variables have the scope of the block they are declared in starting
from the point of definition of the name.

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Example: function_local.py

x = 50
def func(x):
print ('x is', x)
x=2
print ('Changed local x to', x)
func(x)
print ('x is still', x)

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The global statement

• It is used to create global variables from a non-global scope i.e., inside a
function.
• You can specify more than one global variable using the same global
statement e.g. global x, y, z.
• Rules of global keyword:
• When we create a variable inside a function, it is local by default.
• When we define a variable outside of a function, it is global by default. You
don't have to use global keyword.
• We use global keyword to read and write a global variable inside a function.
• Use of global keyword outside a function has no effect.
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function_global.py

x = 50
def func():
global x
print ('x is', x)
x=2
print ('Changed global x to', x)
func()
print ('Value of x is', x)

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Pass-by-object-reference

• Python is different.
• As we know, in Python, “Object references are passed by value”.
• A function receives a reference to (and will access) the same object in
memory as used by the caller.
• However, it does not receive the box that the caller is storing this object in;
as in pass-by-value, the function provides its own box and creates a new
variable for itself.
• Let’s try

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def Append(list):
list.append(1)
print (list)

list = [0]
Append(list)
print (list)
Output:
[0, 1]
[0, 1]

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def reassign(list):
list = [0, 1]
print (list)

list = [0]
reassign(list)
print (list)
Output:
[0, 1]
[0]
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• Note that a return statement without a value is equivalent to return None.

• None is a special type in Python that represents nothingness. For example,
it is used to indicate that a variable has no value if it has a value of None.
• Every function implicitly contains a return None statement at the end unless
you have written your own return statement.
• You can see this by running print some_function() where the function
some_function does not use the return statement such as:
def some_function():
pass
• The pass statement is used in Python to indicate an empty block of
statements

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