National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences

Lab Manual 04
CL461-Artificial Intelligence Lab

Course Instructor Mrs. Abeeda Akram

Lab Instructor (s) Mr. Hassan Masood
Mr. Muhammad Adeel

Section E
Semester Spring 2023

Department of Computer Science

FAST-NU, Lahore, Pakistan
 CL461: Artificial Intelligence Lab

Table of Contents
1 Objectives ............................................................................................................................... 3
2 Task Distribution ..................................................................................................................... 3
3 Python Sets.............................................................................................................................. 3
3.1 Set Initialization Examples............................................................................................... 3
3.2 Set Modification Examples .............................................................................................. 4
3.3 Set Operations .................................................................................................................. 4
3.4 Frozensets ......................................................................................................................... 5
4 Python Exception Handling .................................................................................................... 6
4.1 Types of Exceptions ......................................................................................................... 6
4.2 Exception Handling with Try Except Clause ................................................................... 6
4.3 Re-raise the exception ...................................................................................................... 7
4.4 Catch certain types of exception ...................................................................................... 7
4.5 Try….Finally .................................................................................................................... 8
4.6 Try..except and finally ...................................................................................................... 8
5 Python File Handling .............................................................................................................. 9
5.1 Open & Close a file .......................................................................................................... 9
5.2 Kinds of modes................................................................................................................. 9
5.3 Working of read() mode ................................................................................................... 9
5.4 Working of write() mode ................................................................................................ 10
5.5 Working of append() mode............................................................................................. 10
6 Python Iterators ..................................................................................................................... 10
6.1 Building Custom Iterators ...............................................................................................11
7 Exercise (25 marks) ...............................................................................................................11
7.1 Set Operations (5 marks) .................................................................................................11
7.2 Exception Handling for Division (5 marks) ................................................................... 12
7.3 Reading text from a file and storing it in reversed order (10 marks) ............................. 12
8 Submission Instructions ........................................................................................................ 12
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1 Objectives
After performing this lab, students shall be able to understand Python data structures which
include:
✓ Python sets
✓ Python exception handling
✓ Python file handling
✓ Python iterators

2 Task Distribution
Total Time 170 Minutes

Python Sets 20 Minutes

Python Exception Handling 20 Minutes

Python File Handling 20 Minutes

Python Iterators 10 Minutes

Exercise 90 Minutes

Online Submission 10 Minutes

3 Python Sets
Sets have following characteristics:
• Set in Python is a data structure equivalent to sets in mathematics.
• Sets are a mutable collection of distinct (unique) immutable values that are unordered.
• Any immutable data type can be an element of a set: a number, a string, a tuple.
• Mutable (changeable) data types cannot be elements of the set.
• In particular, list cannot be an element of a set (but tuple can), and another set cannot be
an element of a set.
• You can perform standard operations on sets (union, intersection, difference).

3.1 Set Initialization Examples

You can initialize a set in the following ways:

# Initialize empty set

emptySet = set()

# Pass a list to set() to initialize it

dataScientist = set(['Python', 'R', 'SQL', 'Git', 'Tableau', 'SAS'])
dataEngineer = set(['Python', 'Java', 'Scala', 'Git', 'SQL', 'Hadoop']
)
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# Direct initialization using curly braces

dataScientist = {'Python', 'R', 'SQL', 'Git', 'Tableau', 'SAS'}
dataEngineer = {'Python', 'Java', 'Scala', 'Git', 'SQL', 'Hadoop'}

# Curly braces can only be used to initialize a set containing values

emptyDict= {}

3.2 Set Modification Examples

Let’s consider the following set for our add/remove examples:

# Initialize set with values

graphicDesigner = {'InDesign', 'Photoshop', 'Acrobat', 'Premiere', 'Br
idge'}

# Add a new immutable element to the set

graphicDesigner.add('Illustrator')

# TypeError: unhasable type ‘list’

graphicDesigner.add(['Powerpoint', 'Blender'])

# Remove an element from the set

graphicDesigner.remove('Illustrator')

# Another way to remove an element. What is the difference?

graphicDesigner.discard('Premiere')

# Remove and return an arbitrary value from a set

graphicDesigner.pop()

# Remove al values from the set

graphicDesigner.clear()

3.3 Set Operations

Python sets have methods that allow you to perform these mathematical operations like union,
intersection, difference, and symmetric difference.
Let’s initialize two sets to work on our examples:

# Initialize sets
dataScientist = set(['Python', 'R', 'SQL', 'Git', 'Tableau', 'SAS'])
dataEngineer = set(['Python', 'Java', 'Scala', 'Git', 'SQL', 'Hadoop']
)

# set built-in function union

dataScientist.union(dataEngineer)

# Equivalent Result
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dataScientist | dataEngineer

# Intersection operation
dataScientist.intersection(dataEngineer)

# Equivalent Result
dataScientist & dataEngineer

# These sets have elements in common so isdisjoint would return False

dataScientist.isdisjoint(dataEngineer)

# Difference Operation
dataScientist.difference(dataEngineer)

# Equivalent Result
dataScientist – dataEngineer

# Symmetric Difference Operation

dataScientist.symmetric_difference(dataEngineer)

# Equivalent Result
dataScientist ^ dataEngineer

3.4 Frozensets
You have encountered nested lists and tuples. The problem with nested sets is that you cannot
normally have nested sets as sets cannot contain mutable values including sets.
• A frozenset is very similar to a set except that a frozenset is immutable.
• The primary reason to use them is to write clearer, functional code.
• By defining a variable as a frozen set, you’re telling future readers: do not modify this.
• If you want to use a frozen set you’ll have to use the function to construct it. No other
way.

# Nested Lists and Tuples

nestedLists = [['the', 12], ['to', 11], ['of', 9], ['and', 7], ['that'
, 6]]
nestedTuples = (('the', 12), ('to', 11), ('of', 9), ('and', 7), ('that
', 6))

# Initialize a frozenset
immutableSet = frozenset()

# Initialize a frozenset
nestedSets = set([frozenset()])

A major disadvantage of a frozenset is that since they are immutable, it means that you cannot
add or remove values.
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# AttributeError: 'frozenset' object has no attribute 'add'

immutableSet.add("Strasbourg")

4 Python Exception Handling

An exception is an error that is thrown by our code when the execution of the code results in an
unexpected outcome. Normally, an exception will have an error type and an error message. Some
examples are as follows.
ZeroDivisionError: division by zero
TypeError: must be str, not int

ZeroDivisionError and TypeError are the error type and the text that comes after the colon is the

error message. The error message usually describes the error type.

4.1 Types of Exceptions

Here’s a list of the common exceptions you’ll come across in Python:

1. ImportError: It is raised when you try to import the library that is not installed or you
have provided the wrong name
2. IndexError: Raised when an index is not found in a sequence. For example, if the length
of the list is 10 and you are trying to access the 11th index from that list, then you will get
this error
3. IndentationError: Raised when indentation is not specified properly
4. ZeroDivisionError: It is raised when you try to divide a number by zero
5. ValueError: Raised when the built-in function for a data type has the valid type of
arguments, but the arguments have invalid values specified
6. Exception: Base class for all exceptions. If you are not sure about which exception may
occur, you can use the base class. It will handle all of them

4.2 Exception Handling with Try Except Clause

Python provides us with the try except clause to handle exceptions that might be raised by our
code. The basic anatomy of the try except clause is as follows:

try:
// some code
except:
// what to do when the code in try raise an exception

In plain English, the try except clause is basically saying, “Try to do this, except (otherwise) if
there’s an error, then do this instead”.

There are a few options on what to do with the thrown exception from the try block. Let’s
discuss them.
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4.3 Re-raise the exception

Let’s take a look at how to write the try except statement to handle an exception by re-raising it.
First, let’s define a function that takes two input arguments and returns their sum.

def myfunction(a, b):

return a + b
Next, let’s wrap it in a try except clause and pass input arguments with the wrong type so the
function will raise the TypeError exception.

try:
myfunction(100, "one hundred")
except:
raiseTraceback (most recent call last):
File "<input>", line 2, in <module>
File "<input>", line 2, in myfunction
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'str'

4.4 Catch certain types of exception

Another option is to define which exception types we want to catch specifically. To do this, we
need to add the exception type to the except block.

try:
myfunction(100, "one hundred")
except TypeError:
print("Cannot sum the variables. Please pass numbers
only.")Cannot sum the variables. Please pass numbers only.

To make it even better, we can actually log or print the exception itself.

try:
myfunction(100, "one hundred")
except TypeError as e:
print(f"Cannot sum the variables. The exception was:
{e}")Cannot sum the variables. The exception was: unsupported
operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'str'

Furthermore, we can catch multiple exception types in one except clause if we want to handle
those exception types the same way. Let’s pass an undefined variable to our function so that it
will raise the NameError. We will also modify our except block to catch
both TypeError and NameError and process either exception type the same way.

try:
myfunction(100, a)
except (TypeError, NameError) as e:
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print(f"Cannot sum the variables. The exception was {e}")Cannot

sum the variables. The exception was name 'a' is not defined

4.5 Try….Finally
So far the try statement had always been paired with except clauses. But there is another way to
use it as well. The try statement can be followed by a finally clause. Finally clauses are called
clean-up or termination clauses, because they must be executed under all circumstances, i.e. a
"finally" clause is always executed regardless if an exception occurred in a try block or not. A
simple example to demonstrate the finally clause:

try:
x = float(input("Your number: "))
inverse = 1.0 / x
finally:
print("There may or may not have been an exception.")
print("The inverse: ", inverse)

Your number: 34
There may or may not have been an exception.
The inverse: 0.029411764705882353

4.6 Try..except and finally

"finally" and "except" can be used together for the same try block, as it can be seen in the
following Python example:

try:
x = float(input("Your number: "))
inverse = 1.0 / x
except ValueError:
print("You should have given either an int or a float")
except ZeroDivisionError:
print("Infinity")
finally:
print("There may or may not have been an exception.")

Your number: 23
There may or may not have been an exception.
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5 Python File Handling

Python allows users to handle files by supporting to read and write files, along with many other
file handling options. More details can be learnt here

5.1 Open & Close a file

When you want to read or write a file, the first thing to do is to open the file. Python has a built-
in function open that opens the file and returns a file object. To return a file object we use open()
function along with two arguments, that accepts file name and the mode, whether to read or
write.

The syntax is given below:

open(filename, mode)
5.2 Kinds of modes
There are three basic types of modes in which files can be opened in Python.

mode meaning

r open for reading (default)

r+ open for both reading and writing (file pointer is at the beginning of the file)

w open for writing (truncate the file if it exists)

w+ open for both reading and writing (truncate the file if it exists)

open for writing (append to the end of the file if exists & file pointer is at the end of the
a
file)

Always keep in mind that the mode argument is not mandatory. If not passed, then Python will
assume it to be “ r ” by default.
Let’s look at this program and try to analyze how the read mode works:

# a file named "book", will be opened with the reading mode.

file = open('book.txt', 'r')
# This will print every line one by one in the file
for each in file:
print (each)

5.3 Working of read() mode

There is more than one way to read a file in Python. If you need to extract a string that contains
all characters in the file then we can use file.read(). The full code would work like this:
# Python code to illustrate read() mode
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file = open("file.text", "r")

print (file.read())

Another way to read a file is to call a certain number of characters like in the following code the
interpreter will read the first five characters of stored data and return it as a string:
# Python code to illustrate read() mode character wise
file = open("file.txt", "r")
print (file.read(5))

5.4 Working of write() mode

Let’s see how to create a file and how write mode works:
To manipulate the file, write the following in your Python environment:
# Python code to create a file
file = open('book.txt','w')
file.write("This is the write command")
file.write("It allows us to write in a particular file")
file.close()

The close() command terminates all the resources in use and frees the system of this particular
program.

5.5 Working of append() mode

# Python code to illustrate append() mode

file = open('book.txt','a')
file.write("This will add this line")
file.close()

6 Python Iterators
An iterator is an object that contains a countable number of values. It is an object that can be
iterated upon, meaning that you can traverse through all the values. Technically, in Python, an
iterator is an object which implements the iterator protocol, which consist of the
methods __iter__() and __next__().
Every time you ask an iterator for the next item, it calls its __next__method. If there is
another value available, the iterator returns it. If not, it raises a StopIteration exception.
More information about iterators can be found here.

This behavior (only returning the next element when asked to) has two main advantages:
1. Iterators need less space in memory. They remember the last value and a rule to get to
the next value instead of memorizing every single element of a (potentially very long)
sequence.
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2. Iterators don’t check how long the sequence they produce might get. For instance, they
don’t need to know how many lines a file has or how many files are in a folder to iterate
through them.

(One important note: don’t confuse iterators with iterables. Iterables are objects that can create
iterators by using their __iter__ method)

6.1 Building Custom Iterators

Building an iterator from scratch is easy in Python. We just have to implement
the __iter__() and the __next__() methods.
The __iter__() method returns the iterator object itself. If required, some initialization can be
performed.

The __next__() method must return the next item in the sequence.

Return an iterator from a tuple, and print each value:

mytuple = ("apple", "banana", "cherry")

myit = iter(mytuple)

print(next(myit))
print(next(myit))
print(next(myit))

To iterate the characters of a string:

mystr = "banana"

for x in mystr:
print(x)

The for loop actually creates an iterator object and executes the next() method for each loop.

7 Exercise (20 marks)

7.1 Set Operations (5 marks)

Consider two sets X and Y. You may take any type of values for these sets. Try to find a solution
to get a set having all elements in either X or Y, but not both.
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7.2 Exception Handling for Division (5 marks)

Write a function to divide two numbers P and Q. Implement exception handling technique
(try..except clause) for handling possible exceptions in the scenario.

7.3 Reading text from a file and storing it in reversed order (10 marks)
Design a code which reads text from the file “Alphabets.txt” and stores its data in reverse order
in another file. For this you may upload the given text file on Google Collab’s session and define
the path as:
file_path= ‘/Alphabets.txt’
The same convention can be followed for defining path of the resultant file (reversed text file)
For more information read this.

8 Submission Instructions
Always read the submission instructions carefully.
• Rename your Jupyter notebook to your roll number and download the notebook as .ipynb
extension.
• To download the required file, go to File->Download .ipynb
• Only submit the .ipynb file. DO NOT zip or rar your submission file
• Submit this file on Google Classroom under the relevant assignment.
• Late submissions will not be accepted