Calling different functions in an easier way

Question

I am fairly new to programming, and at the moment am creating a program with many different functions. At the moment, the user has to type in a command, such as 'time', or 'help', without the function brackets. I would like it to stay that way.

But my code for this is very inefficient:

x=input()
if x=='time':
    time()
elif x=='date':
    date()

At the moment it seems short, but I plan to have many functions. Is there a way to make a loop which does all of this?

There's basically the same question here where I explained how to use a dictionary for it: [Too many if statements](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31748617/too-many-if-statements) — SuperBiasedMan, Aug 18 '15 at 16:59

user3270602 · Answer 1 · 2015-08-19T09:34:04.860

2

Keep all the functions in a list, and traverse through list using for loop.

In your example:

def time():
      print "this is time function"
def date():
      print "this is date function"
list1 = [date, time]
x = raw_input()
for foo in list1:
  if foo.__name__ == x:
       foo()

Output:

$ python new1.txt 
date
this is date function
$ python new1.txt 
time
this is time function

edited Aug 19 '15 at 09:34

answered Aug 18 '15 at 17:38

user3270602

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7
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This wont work because the function object `foo` will never be equal to the string that the user inputs. – SuperBiasedMan Aug 19 '15 at 07:23
Assuming the input() returns string as per his example. – user3270602 Aug 19 '15 at 07:27
1

Yes and that string wont be equal to the function so the if statement will never be `True`. – SuperBiasedMan Aug 19 '15 at 07:27
Got it. Thanks. I will update this asap. – user3270602 Aug 19 '15 at 07:30
Thanks, this really helped :D – King Revilo Aug 20 '15 at 12:06
If it works, please accept the answer. Thanks :D – user3270602 Aug 20 '15 at 12:47

Calling different functions in an easier way

1 Answers1