As I learn Python, I’m wondering if possible to define two functions in a single function?

I’ve made an attempt with the following code/MWE to simulate cleaning a dataset of dates:

#COMBINED FUNCTION

def combined_function(entry):
    for char in bad_chars:
        date = entry.replace(char,"")
    if "-" in date:
        split_date = date.split("-")
        date_one = int(split_date[0])
        date_two = int(split_date[1])
        date = (date_one+date_two)/2
        date = round(date)
    else:
        date = int(date)
    return(date)

Unfortunately, when I attempt to run the new function on test_data it does not appear to be yielding the correct results,

test_data = ["1912", "1929", "1913-1923",
             "(1951)", "1994", "1934",
             "c. 1915", "1995", "c. 1912",
             "(1988)", "2002", "1957-1959",
             "c. 1955.", "c. 1970's", 
             "C. 1990-1999"]
bad_chars = ["(",")","c","C",".","s","'", " "]

revised_date = []

for x in test_data:
    date = combined_function(x)
    revised_date.append(date)
    
print(revised_date)

Instead I receive the following traceback error,

ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '(1951)'

Looks like an issue in removing the bad_chars?

Any thoughts/suggestions on where I went wrong? Thanks!

>Solution :

Just change your function parameter to date, and replace the .replace statement with date = date.replace(char,"").

Function should look like this:

def combined_function(date):
    for char in bad_chars:
        date = date.replace(char,"")
    if "-" in date:
        split_date = date.split("-")
        date_one = int(split_date[0])
        date_two = int(split_date[1])
        date = (date_one+date_two)/2
        date = round(date)
    else:
        date = int(date)
    return(date)

Why is this happening??

Simply because date is being replaced with entry in every iteration which remains unchanged by .replace statement.