Hi, I noticed that for the function adjective_to_verb from the Python Track), there are no instructions specifying whether a sentence should always end with punctuation, although all the test cases do. I was wondering if it would be worthwhile to update the description to clarify that a sentence always ends with punctuation, or if we should add a test case without punctuation.
I believe a clearer instruction would better guide the student’s decision on whether to account for punctuation in their implementation. Currently, the tests would pass either way, so it’s not a major issue, but it might help avoid confusion.
Thank you for pointing that out! You’re correct that the tests include punctuation in all the test cases, and the examples in the instructions file also account for punctuation. Both the examples and the tests seem to align in this regard, and there doesn’t appear to be any conflicting or confusing parts as far as I can see.
That said, could you share your thoughts on how you’d propose updating the instructions file to make it clearer? The maintainers would be happy to consider any adjustments to ensure it’s more helpful for students.
There was a mention of it in the Hints and Tips section
Be careful of punctuation! Periods can be removed via slice: 'dark.'[:-1] == 'dark'
I think this is a good approach, if a word happen to be at the end of the sentence and stuck with a period, then students will have to go a bit further learning how to remove it on their own and there is already hint waiting for them.
“If a word happen to be at the end of the sentence and stuck with a period, then…”
What I find confusing is that there is not necessarily the need for an “if” here. The tests will pass when the last caracter of the input sentence is always removed (without testing for period). However I’m not sure is this is the best approach, or at least if this is what we are trying to encourage with this exercise. Btw, where do I find the ‘Hints and Tips’ section?
At a first glance I had the impression that the students should be encourage to test if a “word happen to be at the end of the sentence and stuck with a period” (as @glaxxie described in his response). Is this actually the case? Note that the tests will also pass when the last caracter of the input sentence is always removed (without testing for period).
This is an exercise placed fairly early in the track, so we don’t want to overload it with too many scenarios to account for. The intent was to give students practice in joining strings, splitting strings, extracting a substring by index, and transforming a string into a new string … with a small poke about maybe not always getting back what you expect (that one test case that has a period to deal with). Since students are not taught string methods until the following exercise, things are fairly limited in scope.
I think Isaacs suggestion of discussing/raising the issue of how/why you might check for punctuation in a mentoring session is a good one. I am not sure that adding in complications to the tests is the way to go here.
I do think that we might want to craft some additional practice exercises on the track that would encourage students to better exercise their string processing skills, but that is a topic for another time.
