CS 5 Homework 2, Spring 2024

Putting recursion to work!

Problems:

• Problem 0: Reading [5 points; individual]
  (hw2pr0.txt)   

• Problem 1 (Lab 2): Turtle Graphics!   [30 points; individual or pair]
  (hw2pr1.py)   

• Problem 2: The Sleepwalking Student   [35 points; individual or pair]
  (hw2pr2.py)    Optional extra-credit problems extensions are available in this problem.

• Problem 3: An Integral Part of Python (List Comprehensions)   [30 points; individual or pair]
  (hw2pr3.py)   

• Problem 4: Recursion-free Functions   [50 points; up to +21 extra-credit points; individual or pair]
  (hw2pr4.py - and shared on PythonBat)    This is a two-week problem, begun in week 2, due in week 3.

• Problem 5: More Turtle: Extra-Recursive Graphics! [up to +8 extra-credit points; individual or pair]
  (elaborating on the turtles from hw2pr1, along with screenshots)   

Docstrings and Comments

Be sure each function you write has a docstring. The docstring should explain how many arguments the function takes, what these arguments are supposed to be, and what the function returns. The doctring is intended for the user of your function.

In contrast, comments in your code are used to explain details that are important to a programmer who might be reading your code (that "programmer" could be you—it's easy to forget what you had in mind when you wrote your code!). In cs5, we are less worried about comments for programmers than about the docstrings, which are for users.

We'll look for your docstrings, so do be sure to include them.

A Note on Using Recursion

Thursday's (not Wednesday's) assignment exercises the ability to write functions recursively. If you have some programming experience, you may be familiar with other, non-recursive strategies for solving these problems.

Even if you do know such non-recursive strategies, however, we ask that you use recursion to solve the problems on this assignment.

Our primary goal here is to practice an important problem-solving concept and technique -- one that can handle problems other techniques struggle with.