Write a function, precedes(one_string,
another_string), that receives two strings as parameters.
The function returns the string that comes first in
alphabetical order. For example, Hungry comes before Starving
alphabetically, because h comes before s, and Duchess precedes
Duke, because both strings start with du, but c precedes k. The
function should ignore case.
Note that we are testing your code
differently in this task, please only submit your function
definitions, without any code outside the functions! The
main python file, which handles input and output, is already
provided. You can download and place the main file in the same
directory as your python file. You can then run the main python
file we provide to try out the samples.
Input
Your function will be called with two given parameters as
input. Each parameter will be a string, consisting of
$1$ to $20$ letters from the English alphabet
and spaces. You do not need to check this.
As usual, the input is given in an input file, and a
description of that follows below. But the given main file will
take care of reading the input and passing the parameters to
your function, as well as printing the result to the output for
you, so you don’t really need to worry about that, except for
when you want to test your code locally, then you might want to
do something similar. The samples given below show the input
and corresponding output as they appear in these files.
The input consists of two lines. Each line contains one
string, and those are the ones that will be passed as the
parameters to the function.
Formally (since we know that mathematical notation is your
favourite language), the input consists of $n = 2$ lines, and line $i$ contains a string $s_i$, for $1 \le i \le n$. Further, $1 \le |s_i| \le 20$, where
$|s|$ denotes the length
of a string $s$.
Output
The output of the function should be a string, the same
string as one of the input strings, the one that precedes the
other alphabetically. The comparison should be made ignoring
case, but the result should be the original string
unchanged.
This will result in an output file that is one line
containing the value returned from calling precedes, with the first input string
$s_1$ passed as the first
argument to the function, and the second input string
$s_2$ passed as the second
argument.
The function precedes will be
called exactly once, in each execution of the program, which is
to say for each test case.
| Sample Input 1 |
Sample Output 1 |
monkey
cat
|
cat
|
| Sample Input 2 |
Sample Output 2 |
muna
gleyma
|
gleyma
|
| Sample Input 3 |
Sample Output 3 |
cat
Bat
|
Bat
|
| Sample Input 4 |
Sample Output 4 |
Programming
forritun
|
forritun
|
| Sample Input 5 |
Sample Output 5 |
The past
the present
|
The past
|
| Sample Input 6 |
Sample Output 6 |
Duke
Duchess
|
Duchess
|
| Sample Input 7 |
Sample Output 7 |
President
President
|
President
|
| Sample Input 8 |
Sample Output 8 |
begin
beginning
|
begin
|
| Sample Input 9 |
Sample Output 9 |
beginning
begin
|
begin
|
| Sample Input 10 |
Sample Output 10 |
Hungry
Starving
|
Hungry
|
