Question

This is my first time around, so i would appreciate your patience with what might appear as a lame looking question 🙂

I’m trying to write a function called do_n that takes a function object and a number, n, as arguments and then call the given function n times. Here’s the code:

def name():
    print 'Jack'

def do_n(fo, x):
    if x <= 0:
        return
    print fo
    (fo, x-1)

When making a function call from within main:

do_n(name, 3)

I get the following outcome:

<function name at 0x01F93AF0>

I’m trying to get the program to print out:

Jack
Jack
Jack

Many thanks in advance

Answer 1

You are neither calling the function, nor are you actually doing the recursive call. Corrected version:

def name():
    print 'Jack'

def do_n(fo, x):
    if x <= 0:
        return
    fo()
    do_n(fo, x - 1)

To call a function n times, you’d usually use a for loop instead of tail recursion in Python:

for dummy in range(10):
    name()