How to count the output of a defined function?

Question

I'm new to Python and trying to figure out a rather simple way to count the output of a defined function. I want to count the number of unique users who have replied to a given username by defining a function to do this.

st='@'
en=' '
task1dict={}
for t in a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n:
if t['text'][0]=='@':
    print('...'),print(t['user']),print(t['text'].split(st)[-1].split(en)[0])
    user=t['user']
    repliedto=t['text'].split(st)[-1].split(en)[0]
    task1dict.setdefault(user, set())
    task1dict[user].add(repliedto)
task1dict['realDonaldTrump'].add('joeclarkphd')

This returns what is below when I enter

print(task1dict)

{'datageek88': {'fundevil', 'joeclarknet', 'joeclarkphd'},
 'fundevil': {'datageek88'},
 'joeclarkphd': {'datageek88'},
 'realDonaldTrump': {'datageek88', 'joeclarkphd'},
 'sundevil1992': {'datageek88', 'joeclarkphd'}}

I then want to print all the Twitter users who replied to a certain user for example, all the people who replied to datageek88 is done by

def print_users_who_got_replies_from(tweeter):
    for z in task1dict:
        if tweeter in task1dict[z]:
            print(z)

This prints me what is below when I enter:

print_users_who_got_replies_from('datageek88')

fundevil
joeclarkphd
sundevil1992
realDonaldTrump

Now, I want to count the number of replies by defining a function that then prints how many people replied to a user. This function should return the answer as a number (4), but I can't seem to get that part to work, any suggestions or help? Thanks! I have tried using the len() function but can't seem to get that to work, although it might be the answer.

Kevin · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-02 17:42:12Z

1

Rule of thumb: when you have a function that prints many things, and you think "ok now how do I interact with those values that were printed?", that's a signal that you should be appending those values to a list rather than printing them.

In this case, the most straightforward modification to the code would be

def get_users_who_got_replies_from(tweeter):
    result = []
    for z in task1dict:
        if tweeter in task1dict[z]:
            result.append(z)
    return result

seq = get_users_who_got_replies_from('datageek88')
for item in seq:
    print(item)
print("Number of users who got replies:", len(seq))

Bonus advanced approach: strictly speaking, you don't need a whole function just to create and return one list based on the contents of another iterable. You could do it with a list comprehension:

seq = [z for z in task1dict if 'datageek88' in task1dict[x]]
for item in seq:
    print(item)
print("Number of users who got replies:", len(seq))

edited Mar 2, 2016 at 17:42

answered Mar 2, 2016 at 17:36

Kevin

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1 Comment

Jessica Tylka Over a year ago

Thank you! This helped me so much!

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