Question

I have the following little function written in Python:

def encode(str):
    out = ""
    for i in str:
        ret += str(ord(i.upper()) - 64)
    return ret

Basically, what I want to do is get the number of the letter in the alphabat and concatenate it to the ‘out’ string. With this code I get a traceback at line 4: ‘str’ object is not applicable.

Could someone please explain me why it throws this error and how I can fix this? (Sorry if this was already asked once, I couldn’t find it, probably also because I’m pretty new to Python and programming)

Answer 1

Never name your variable on the pre-defined built-in name.

In your code, str is not a built-in function. It’s the variable you have used as parameter in your function.

Another problem is, you have declared out variable, and using ret which will give you error. Change out = "" to ret = "".