Function returns the same value many times I Python-CodePudding

I need to write a function that will convert the number A to base N. In this case, the number 19 is binary. All I have to do is rewrite the resulting number backwards and return from the function. I looked into debug mode and didn't understood a thing honestly, it's just looping over line 15 because of... reasons I guess.

def translate(a, n=2):
    r1 = []
    r2 = ()
    r3 = ()

    b = int(a/n)
    c = a%n
    
    if b >= 1:
        r1.append(str(c))
        r1.append(str(translate(b,n)))
    else:
        r1.append(str(c))
    
    return r1

print(translate(19,2))

I didn’t manage to come up with much, after all, I’m not a programmer at all, but I need to do this so that I don’t get expelled.

CodePudding user response：

You don't really need a recursive approach for this. Here's a technique that will work for where 2 <= base <= 10 and a >= 0

def translate(a, base=2):
    r = ''
    while a > 0:
        r  = str(a % base)
        a //= base
    return r[::-1] if r else '0'

CodePudding user response：

The problem was that every time you call the function, it would append to the list and also, the list would be initialized every time it was called. Hence using a global variable and instead of appending the returned value in the if block just running the function again worked. Code:

r1 = []
def translate(a, n=2):
    global r1
    r2 = ()
    r3 = ()

    b = int(a/n)
    c = a%n
    
    if b >= 1:
        r1.append(str(c))
        # print(r1)
        translate(b,n)
        # print(r1)
    else:
        r1.append(str(c))
    
    # return r1
translate(2,2)
print(''.join(r1)[::-1])# Join and reverse