Sum of digits in a string

Question

if i just read my sum_digits function here, it makes sense in my head but it seems to be producing wrong results. Any tip?

def is_a_digit(s):
''' (str) -> bool

Precondition: len(s) == 1

Return True iff s is a string containing a single digit character (between
'0' and '9' inclusive).

>>> is_a_digit('7')
True
>>> is_a_digit('b')
False
'''

return '0' <= s and s <= '9'

def sum_digits(digit):
    b = 0
    for a in digit:
        if is_a_digit(a) == True:
            b = int(a)
            b += 1

    return b

For the function sum_digits, if i input sum_digits('hihello153john'), it should produce 9

Answer 1

Notice that you can easily solve this problem using built-in functions. This is a more idiomatic and efficient solution:

def sum_digits(digit):
    return sum(int(x) for x in digit if x.isdigit())

sum_digits('hihello153john')
=> 9

In particular, be aware that the is_a_digit() method already exists for string types, it's called isdigit().

And the whole loop in the sum_digits() function can be expressed more concisely using a generator expression as a parameter for the sum() built-in function, as shown above.