Krdytkyu

I have some code that takes an integer as an input argument, and I want it to be able to handle a list of integers as well. I am trying to decide the best method for handling such inputs. A simplified version of my function would be as follows:

def compute_value(int_arg):

    value = 

    for x in int_arg:

        value = value.append(some_operation(x))

    return value

If I use this for loop, an error will occur because an integer isn't iterable. To solve this, it seems to require converting int_arg to a list at the start of the code:

def compute_value(int_arg):

    int_arg = [int_arg] if type(int_arg)==int else int_arg

    ...

This kind of check seems a bit cumbersome, especially when writing many functions that behave the same way (i.e. operate on either a single value or multiple values). Is there a better way to write this type of function so that it can handle things robustly?

Could you use try/except to handle the error?

def compute_value(int_arg):

    value = 

    try:

        for x in int_arg:

            value = value.append(some_operation(x))

        return value

    except TypeError:  

        return int_arg

Also I noticed (edit:)your function some_operation()'s argument x isn't defined, and you assign value.append() to value every time you iterate over int_arg.