Could I clean this up?

Question

Hello,
Is this how I should have solved this problem? Does anyone have any suggestion on how I could have approached this challenge differently? Is there anything in my code that shouldn't be there or could be more efficient?
instances.py
def combiner(arg):
    word =''
    num = 0
    for item in arg:
        if isinstance(item, int):
            num += item
        elif isinstance(item, float):
            num += item
        elif isinstance(item, str):
            word += item
    return word + str(num)

Alexander Davison · Accepted Answer

Your answer is fine, but if are nit-picky about simplicity and clarity, you might write this instead:
python
def combiner(arg):
    string = ''
    num = 0
    for item in arg:
        item_type = type(item)
        if item_type in (int, float):
            num += item
        elif item_type == str:
            string += item
    return string + str(num)

This is only a little bit cleaner. I would probably write something like the above as my solution.
If you are going for minimal lines of code, you can (but probably shouldn't) write:
```python
from functools import reduce
def combiner(list):
    string = reduce(lambda x, y: x + (y if isinstance(y, str) else ''), list, '')
    sum = reduce(lambda x, y: x + (y if isinstance(y, int) or isinstance(y, int) else 0), list, 0)
    return string + str(sum)
```
This is concise, but who would want to debug that? :grimacing: (In fact, there actually is a bug! It's nearly impossible to spot.)
I hope this helps! ~Alex

Wenye Zhao · Answer

One truncation I can can suggest is combining you two elif statements for int and float:
python
def combiner(arg):
    word = ''
    num = 0
    for item in arg:
        if isinstance(item, str):
            word += item
        elif isinstance(item, (int, float)):
            num += item
    return word + str(num)

Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Looking to learn something new?

Philip Schultz

Philip Schultz

Could I clean this up?

2 Answers

Alexander Davison

Alexander Davison

Wenye Zhao

Wenye Zhao