Learn

Using a single parameter is useful but functions let us use as many parameters as we want! That way, we can pass in more than one input to our functions.

We can write a function that takes in more than one parameter by using commas:

def my_function(parameter1, parameter2, parameter3):
  # Some code

When we call our function, we will need to provide arguments for each of the parameters we assigned in our function definition.

# Calling my_function
my_function(argument1, argument2)

For example take our trip application’s trip_welcome() function that has two parameters:

def trip_welcome(origin, destination):
  print("Welcome to Tripcademy")
  print("Looks like you are traveling from " + origin)
  print("And you are heading to " + destination)

Our two parameters in this function are origin and destination. In order to properly call our function, we need to pass argument values for both of them.

The ordering of your parameters is important as their position will map to the position of the arguments and will determine their assigned value in the function body (more on this in the next exercise!).

Our function call could look like:

trip_welcome("Prospect Park", "Atlantic Terminal")

In this call, the argument value of "Prospect Park" is assigned to be the origin parameter, and the argument value of"Atlantic Terminal" is assigned to the destination parameter.

The output would be:

Welcome to Tripcademy
Looks like you are traveling from Prospect Park
And you are heading to Atlantic Terminal

Let’s practice writing and calling a multiple parameter function!

Instructions

Our travel application users want to calculate the total expenses they may have to incur on a trip.

Write a function called calculate_expenses that will have four parameters (in exact order):

plane_ticket_price
car_rental_rate
hotel_rate
trip_time

Each of these parameters will account for a different expense that our users will incur.

Note: Like before, we will see an error: SyntaxError: unexpected EOF while parsing, since there is no code in the body of the function. In the next step we will add statements to the function.

However, you can also add a pass statement inside your empty function and it will prevent that error. Remove the pass statement in the next step when you add code to your function.

Within the body of the function, let’s start to make some calculations for our expenses. First, let’s calculate the total price for a car rental.

Create new variable called car_rental_total that is the product of car_rental_rate and trip_time.

Next, we want to apply the same logic but for our hotel_rate.

Create new variable called hotel_total that is the product of hotel_rate and trip_time.

We also have a coupon to give our users some cashback for their hotel visit so subtract 10 from that total in the same statement. Woohoo, coupons! 💵

Lastly, let’s print a nice message for our users to see the total. Use print to output the sum of car_rental_total, hotel_total and plane_ticket_price.

Call your function with the following argument values for the parameters listed:

plane_ticket_price : 200
car_rental_rate : 100
hotel_rate : 100
trip_time: 5

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