Why does this method not return a value?

Question

I have the following code:

class Thing:
    def __init__(self):
        self.a = 30
        self.b = 10
    def sumit(self):
        return self.a + self.b

giventhing = Thing
print(giventhing.sumit/2)

I get this error:

TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for /: 'function and 'int'

Asked By: selfawareuser1

||

Source

Answer 1

sumit is a function: you need to call it with brackets: print(giventhing.sumit()/2)

Answered By: Richard Inglis

Answer 2

There are two issues here:

sumit is an instance method, so you need to call it on an instance, not a class (or type).
To execute callables, such as methods, you need to use the propert syntax, which is method(), note the () at the end.

Doing giventhing = Thing won’t give you an instance, it will give you a reference to the class/type itself, which is only useful if you want to operate with class members, which is not your use case.

Doing giventhing.sumit / 2, won’t divide the result of sumit by 2. In fact, giventhing.sumit will yield a reference to the function itself, not its result. You need to call the function in order to get its return value, i.e. sumit()

Fixed code:

giventhing = Thing()          # You need an instance of Thing
print(giventhing.sumit() / 2) # You need to actually call sumit on the instance

Answered By: Matias Cicero

Answer 3

Functions are type of function you need to first call it

So need:

giventhing = Thing()
print(giventhing.sumit()/2)

So totally need parentheses

Here’s an example:

>>> class A:
    def __init__(self,a):
        self.a=a
    def out(self):
        return self.a

>>> A
<class '__main__.A'>
>>> a=A(1)
>>> a.out
<bound method A.out of <__main__.A object at 0x0000005F9D177EB8>>
>>> a.out()
1
>>>

Answered By: U12-Forward

Why does this method not return a value?

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