If only Reeborg could decide on its own, writing programs would be much simpler … WAIT ! Didn’t I tell you: Reeborg can make decisions on its own.
The so-called if statement follows a pattern somewhat similar to that of functions :
def some_name():
# block of code A
if some_condition:
# block of code B
That block of code B will be performed if the condition happens to be true, otherwise simply ignored as if it were deleted.
It does not mean that such a deletion would be done permanently: if, somehow, our program looped back and repeated this part of the code again, the if statement would be reevaluated each time to decide whether or not to execute the lines of code inside the code block B.
We can represent this description using a flowchart:
There are special functions, used as conditions, that Reeborg recognizes that allow to decide things for himself. The first of these is object_here() which tells Reeborg that there is at least one object at the grid position where he is located. For example, if we want to ask Reeborg to collect tokens, one part of the code could be:
if object_here():
take()
Have a look at worlds Tokens 1 and Tokens 2. In both cases, and assuming that Reeborg moves forward in a straight line, when he finds a token, all he as to do is:
where I have introduced a new command that Reeborg understands: done(). Actually, you should think of this command as Reeborg saying it himself and declaring that he has finished.
Let’s write the outline of a program that will work in both worlds Tokens 1 and Tokens 2:
def move_until_done():
move()
if object_here():
# something
# something else
# something else again
# yet one more
done()
repeat 42:
move_until_done()
Why 42? … well, I just want to be sure that Reeborg will take enough steps no matter what world he is in. So far, all the worlds are small enough that this should be fine. I agree, it does not seem very smart; we’ll see how to fix that later.
Try it!
Copy the above in the Code editor, filling in the missing commands, and test your program on both worlds Tokens 1 and Tokens 2.
For educators
The function object_here() returns a list of object types (as strings) found at a given location. For example, if there are stars and tokens at the same location, object_here() could return ["star", "token"] or ["token", "star"]. If no object is present, an empty list is returned. As you likely already know, Python treats an empty list as being equivalent to False in an if statement, and a non-empty list as equivalent to True.
If many objects could potentially be found in a given world, and we are interested in only one object type, we can specify it as a function argument:
if object_here("token"):
take("token")
object_here("token") will either return an empty list or the list ["token"].