CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonloopsrecursion
user3037525
user3037525

Reputation: 13

Find value of scrabble word

I have little experience in any higher level language. Fiddled with basic and dos-batch when I was a kid.

I'm trying to find the point value of a word in scrabble. This kind of recursive structure seems slow and inefficient. What would be a better way to address this problem in terms of program structure/concept?

value_list = {'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)

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3241

Answers (4)

Angry Cat
Angry Cat

Reputation: 251

Yeah, function call is expensive is Python.

Martijn Pieters's method is a good example for beginners to understand list-comprehensions.

If you want a more simple and readable way, try this:

sum(value_list.values())

Upvotes: -1

Martijn Pieters
Martijn Pieters

Reputation: 1123410

You'd loop over word directly and use sum():

def find_value(word):
    return sum(value_list[char] for char in word)

There is no need to use recursion here; the above needs no globals either. Try to avoid global state, as that easily leads to hard-to-debug problems when you start using functions in multiple locations.

Upvotes: 5

jingyu
jingyu

Reputation: 115

def find_value(word):

    return sum(map(lambda x:value_list[x], list(word)))


Upvotes: 0

Anton Guryanov
Anton Guryanov

Reputation: 12467

First of all, you can use list of values instead of dict, and just count index for the letter x in this list as ord(x) - ord('a')

Second, don't use global, it is a bad programming habit. You should accumulate your value in local variable and then return this value from the function.

And third, use loop instead of recursion or, even better, functions like sum.

Upvotes: 1

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