Method Invocations¶

There is one other special type of function called a method, which is invoked slightly differently. Some object types have methods defined for them. You have already seen some methods that operate on strings (e.g., find, index, split, join) and on lists (e.g., append, pop).

We will not learn about how define methods until later in the course, when we cover Classes. But it’s worth getting a basic understanding now of how methods are invoked. To invoke a method, the syntax is <expr>.<methodname>(<additional parameter values>).

The expression to the left of the dot should evaluate to an object of the right type, an object for which <methodname> is defined. The method will be applied to that object (that object will be a parameter value passed to the function/method.) If the method takes additional parameters (some do, some don’t), additional expressions that evaluate to values are included inside the parentheses.

For example, let’s look at an invocation of the split method.

The split method operates on a string. Because it is a method rather than a regular function, the string it operates on appears to the left of the period, rather than inside the parentheses. The split method always returns a list. On line 2, that returned value is assigned to the variable z.

The split method actually takes an optional extra parameter. If no value is provided inside the parentheses, the split method chops up the list whenever it encounters a whitespace (a space, a tab, or a newline). But you can specifying a character or character string to split on. Try putting “s” inside the parentheses on line 2 above, make a prediction about what the output will be, and then check it. Try some other things inside the parentheses.

Note that the thing to the left of the period can be any expression, not just a variable name. It can even be a return value from some other function call or method invocation. For example, if we want to remove the s and t characters from a string, we can do it all on one line as show below.

What’s going on there? Start reading left to right. “This is a sentence” is a string, and the replace method is invoked on it. Two additional parameter values are provided, “s”, and and empty string. So, in the sentence, all occurrences of “s” are replaced with the empty string. A new string is returned, “Thi i a entence.” There is another period followed by the word replace, so the replace method is called again on that string, returning the shorter string, which is printed.