9. Composition¶

As we have already seen, you can call one function from within another. This ability to build functions by using other functions is called composition.

As an example, we’ll expand our program from the previous chapter to tell us how much we will be reimbursed for travel expenses, since this was a road trip we took for work. Our workplace policy is that these expenses must be broken down by day. So we’ll need to figure out the mileage reimbursement on a daily basis. We get a reimbursement of $.50 per mile. We also get a $100 per day reimbursement for food and lodging. Since there are multiple different computations to perform, it makes sense to break this program down into smaller chunks.

First, let’s review our program so far and then see what new input, output, and processing we need to add.

def daily_miles_traveled(before, after, days):
    total_miles = after - before
    average_miles = total_miles / days
    return average_miles

def main():
    print(daily_miles_traveled(1000.0, 1500.5, 5))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

It looks like we’ll need to add a function that will multiply the average daily miles traveled by the amount we are paid per mile to determine our mileage reimbursement. It should also add the per diem amount to that so that it returns the total amount we should be reimbursed per day. Then we’ll need to call this function from main and pass in these three inputs. (Note that we want to make these pay per mile and per diem amounts parameters rather than hard code them within the function as $.50 and $100 respectively, since these values may change frequently).

We could now say that our main function is composed of our two other functions. We call our previously defined function daily_miles_traveled from within the main function and then we pass the data returned from that function as an argument to the reimbursement function. The reimbursement function then calculates and outputs our daily reimbursement total to the main function. The main function then outputs this total to the user by printing it on the screen.

In this way we keep our tasks separated into smaller chunks of code, each handling a specific task. This will make it easier to reuse our code in other programs, and also easier to change or debug the code in this program.

Notice how this also makes our program more flexible. For instance, the reimbursement function could be used to determine weekly reimbursements instead of just daily reimbursements. We wouldn’t need to change anything within that function to do so, we would only change the arguments that we pass via the main function so that we are passing the weekly miles traveled and weekly extra reimbursement amounts to it instead of the daily miles and per diem amounts.