Chapter 4

Question 1

argument

Answer 1

A value provided to a function when the function is called. This value is assigned to the corresponding parameter in the function. The argument can be the result of an expression which may involve operators, operands and calls to other fruitful functions.

Question 2

body

Answer 2

The second part of a compound statement. The body consists of a sequence of statements all indented the same amount from the beginning of the header. The standard amount of indentation used within the Python community is 4 spaces.

Question 3

compound statement

Answer 3

A statement that consists of two parts:

header - which begins with a keyword determining the statement type, and ends with a colon.
body - containing one or more statements indented the same amount from the header.

Question 4

docstring

Answer 4

If the first thing in a function body is a string (or, we’ll see later, in other situations too) that is attached to the function as its __doc__ attribute, and can be used by tools like PyScripter.

Question 5

flow of execution

Answer 5

The order in which statements are executed during a program run.

Question 6

frame

Answer 6

A box in a stack diagram that represents a function call. It contains the local variables and parameters of the function.

Question 7

function

Answer 7

A named sequence of statements that performs some useful operation. Functions may or may not take parameters and may or may not produce a result.

Question 8

function call

Answer 8

A statement that executes a function. It consists of the name of the function followed by a list of arguments enclosed in parentheses.

Question 9

function composition

Answer 9

Using the output from one function call as the input to another.

Question 10

function definition

Answer 10

A statement that creates a new function, specifying its name, parameters, and the statements it executes.

Question 11

fruitful function

Answer 11

A function that returns a value when it is called.

Question 12

header line

Answer 12

The first part of a compound statement. A header line begins with a keyword and ends with a colon (:)

Question 13

import statement

Answer 13

A statement which permits functions and variables defined in another Python module to be brought into the environment of another script. To use the features of the turtle, we need to first import the turtle module.

Question 14

lifetime

Answer 14

Variables and objects have lifetimes — they are created at some point during program execution, and will be destroyed at some time.

Question 15

local variable

Answer 15

A variable defined inside a function. A local variable can only be used inside its function. Parameters of a function are also a special kind of local variable.

Question 16

parameter

Answer 16

A name used inside a function to refer to the value which was passed to it as an argument.

Question 17

refactor

Answer 17

A fancy word to describe reorganizing our program code, usually to make it more understandable. Typically, we have a program that is already working, then we go back to “tidy it up”. It often involves choosing better variable names, or spotting repeated patterns and moving that code into a function.

Question 18

stack diagram

Answer 18

A graphical representation of a stack of functions, their variables, and the values to which they refer.

Question 19

traceback

Answer 19

A list of the functions that are executing, printed when a runtime error occurs. A traceback is also commonly refered to as a stack trace, since it lists the functions in the order in which they are stored in the runtime stack.

Question 20

void function

Answer 20

The opposite of a fruitful function: one that does not return a value. It is executed for the work it does, rather than for the value it returns.