I tried to make a Fibonacci program in Python to experiment with getting user input, displaying output and type casting. This was the code that I came up with at first:

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def fib(n):
    print 'n =', n
    if n > 1:
        return fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2)
    else:
        print 'end of the line'
        return 1

n = raw_input('Input number: ')
int(n)
fib(n)

When I tried running the program in the CLI, I have been successful in getting the user input. Unfortunately, it came out with an exception when it tried to run the fib function:

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Input number: 5
n = 5
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “fibonacci.py”, line 11, in
fib(n)
File “fibonacci.py”, line 4, in fib
return n * fib(n – 1)
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -: ‘str’ and ‘int’

I was dumbfounded when I came across this exception because I was certain that I casted the user input from String to Integer already with this:

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int(n)

Since I didn’t know what caused the exception anymore, I decided to ask this question on StackOverflow. It turns out, the function, int(n), returns the integer equivalent of its parameter without changing its original value. It’s kind of like pointers in C where you can manipulate the referenced value without affecting the original value to which it’s pointed to.

If I did the same thing with Java, it’ll automatically assign the type casted value as the parameter’s new value. I’m used to how Java does it but I think Python has a more practical way of doing it.

One of the people who answered my question suggested a different approach to my code and why it should be that way. I’d like to quote him on his answer:

“The problem is that raw_input is providing a string, not an integer. Can I suggest just putting the integer value into n in the first place:

n = int(raw_input(‘Input numver: ‘)) fib(n)

Avoid n = int(n) as in a longer section of code it would be unclear when you came back to it what type n is, and you have no need for the original string value.

The deeper understanding you need is that Python is strongly typed – it cares what type everything is, but it is also dynamically typed, so n could change from holding a string value to holding an integer value. But Python is still keeping track of what is held, so when you put the return value of raw_input into n, Python knows it is a string, so multiplying that string by a number makes no sense and returns an error.”

After reading the solutions to my problem and the suggestions that they made, I came up with this solution:

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def fib(n):
  print 'n =', n
  if n > 1:
    return fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2)
  else:
    print 'end of the line'
    return 1

n = int(raw_input('Input number: '))
print "Fibonacci of %d is %d" % (n, fib(n))

I also did a bit of string formatting/concatenation on the last line of the code. This is the simplest and cleanest code I could come up with. I’m beginning to love the cleanliness of Python’s syntax. I’m still getting used to not using indentations instead of curly braces though.