FAQs on the exercise Open Addressing in the Setter
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I wrote my code below, but got a Codecademy error. I looked at the solution and I was missing returns (which I don’t understand how that changes what the code does) and I used an else statement as well. It has something to do with the else statement and not returning, but I don’t know why. I also can’t figure out what in my code made Codecademy think assign didn’t have a self, key, value parameters?
That’s a very poor test, I suppose they wanted to test for the parameters, and tested for what goes wrong if they’re not there. They should be testing the parameters directly which are very much accessible.
Obviously the issue is that there may be other reasons for TypeError - the error message only matches a subset of what is actually tested for.
try:
h = HashMap(5)
except TypeError:
fail_tests("Does `HashMap`'s constructor take a single argument?")
try:
h.assign('ab', 'c')
h.assign('ba', 'd')
except TypeError:
fail_tests("Does `HashMap.assign()` take `self`, `key`, and `value` as parameters?")
I showed you the test code associated with the error message you’re getting.
You can invoke your code the same way as the test does to get the failure to happen (first step to solving a bug is getting the bug to happen, or at least understanding how it happens)
I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what the “solution” is doing, and instead consider what should happen.
So I added many print statements so that I can understand what is happening throughout the run. I think I don’t understand the error it is throwing enough to figure out what is wrong. Can you help me understand the error?
It appears to assign the 2nd key,value just fine, but then something happens afterwards that seems related to the 2nd entry and the while statement?
You wouldn’t copy the whole test code, you would copy the parts that make use of your code. Like the error message points out, you don’t have a fail_tests function, so obviously you can’t call that. That’s the second exception.
What you want to happen here is to let it crash so that you get information about what happened, instead of what codecademy does which is to catch the exception so you can’t see it, and instead providing a herpderp message about parameters.
The first exception is the failure you’re looking for, and it tells you where and how something goes wrong which you can then compare to what you meant to happen.
NoneType is the type of None (None is the only instance, so in this case it also says which the value is)
subscription is the [] operator, for example lookup by index for a list, so an error message complaining that None isn’t subscriptable… well, it speaks for itself, None doesn’t support that.
None[4] # error
You should have some kind of argument for what and why that value should instead be, so you would check the code that makes that so. (alternatively if it should be None, then this action shouldn’t be taken since it isn’t possible/doesn’t make sense)
I see what is happening. So after the 1st collision it finds another location. current_array_value gets reassigned to None during the first parts of the while loop. If the current_array_value is ever None in this type of object the while loop should end and not return back to the top. At the end of the if statement it returns back to the while loop, but now `current_array_value’ is None so the while loop does it’s thing but like you said:
while None[0] != key :
doesn’t make sense so it throws the error code. Is this why the solutions has the return at the end of each if statement? To end the while loop? I would think you would want a return at the end of the if and elif, but not the else since you want to be in the while loop until you find the key or find an open slot.
OR I could set:
current_array_value = self.array[new_array_index]
after the if or elif statement. This would make the current_array_value = key and also end the while loop. Does this reasoning sound right? Either return or setting current_array_value = key to end the while loop and avoid the NoneType error?
Without understanding what’s supposed to happen in full (I just went ahead and read the instructions of this exercise and the previous one) –
Isn’t that what the loop’s condition is supposed to be testing?
And if exiting early from within the loop, then what is the condition in the loop doing? Nothing at all. I don’t like that at all. See what I mean about not paying too much attention to the solution? They don’t always seem to have had too much thought put into them.
What should happen instead, is that the variable named current_array_value … actually refers to what it says it refers to.
Clearly whoever wrote the “solution” ran into the same problem, and kind of swept the dirt under the rug instead of fixing the actual issue.
I offer up this solution instead:
while self.array[array_index][0] != key:
new_hash_code = self.hash(key, number_collisions)
array_index = self.compressor(new_hash_code)
if self.array[array_index] is None or self.array[array_index][0] == key:
self.array[array_index] = [key, value]
number_collisions += 1
With the difference that rather than assigning a variable to the value in the backing memory, I instead track the location so that if memory is updated, I’ll see the new value when looking there, instead of the old value.
Alternatively, update the variable after updating memory.
(I say “memory” but there is no direct access to memory, list does that for us)
Just working through this exercise (link above), is there a particular reason the site wrote the code as:
if current_array_value is None:
self.array[new_array_index] = [key, value]
return
if current_array_value[0] == key:
self.array[new_array_index] = [key, value]
return
number_collisions += 1
I saw this style in the previous exercise as well. I used if, elif, else, but i was wondering if there was some specific reason multiple if, if statements were used instead of the below version by the site.
I suppose since each of the first two has a return in it the later ones wont be run if the key is found in the first two, so there isnt a time advantage but, just curious if i am missing something.
So I have read the thread of this exercise but I couldn’t find a solution for my problem. I have been trying this for some time and I cant get it to work and I dont know why… The part that doesn’t work is the one related to the last point of the exercise where we have to set the conditionals for the different cases. My way of doing it was this one:
# current_array_value currently holds different key
if current_array_value[0] != key:
number_collisions = 1
while (current_array_value[0] != key):
new_hash_code = self.hash(key, number_collisions) #+1 in hash code already included in .hash()
new_array_index = self.compressor(new_hash_code)
current_array_value = self.array[new_array_index]
if current_array_value[0] != key:
number_collisions += 1
if current_array_value is None:
current_array_value = [key, value]
return
else:
current_array_value = [key, value]
return
but for some reason it raises an error… The solution given for the exercise is the following:
I was wondering the same thing. I had been taught that the if, elis, else framework was better practise because it was more readable and gave you more clear control - ie the code could only do one of 3 things. But that was in a different language and I don’t know if that is true for python as well.
If it helps, I’ve learned this for python too- I think it’s supposed to make things run a bit faster (eg if you have a bunch of elif it will only keep checking them all until one of them runs, unlike if they were all if statements, when every statement would be checked no matter what)
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