Example: guide.rst — The trianglelib guide¶

Whether you need to test the properties of triangles, or learn their dimensions, trianglelib does it all!

Special triangles¶

There are two special kinds of triangle for which trianglelib offers special support.

Equilateral triangle
All three sides are of equal length.
Isosceles triangle
Has at least two sides that are of equal length.

These are supported both by simple methods that are available in the trianglelib.utils module, and also by a pair of methods of the main Triangle class itself.

Triangle dimensions¶

The library can compute triangle perimeter, area, and can also compare two triangles for equality. Note that it does not matter which side you start with, so long as two triangles have the same three sides in the same order!

>>> from trianglelib.shape import Triangle
>>> t1 = Triangle(3, 4, 5)
>>> t2 = Triangle(4, 5, 3)
>>> t3 = Triangle(3, 4, 6)
>>> print t1 == t2
True
>>> print t1 == t3
False
>>> print t1.area()
6.0
>>> print t1.scale(2.0).area()
24.0


Valid triangles¶

Many combinations of three numbers cannot be the sides of a triangle. Even if all three numbers are positive instead of negative or zero, one of the numbers can still be so large that the shorter two sides could not actually meet to make a closed figure. If $$c$$ is the longest side, then a triangle is only possible if:

$\begin{split}a + b > c\end{split}$

While the documentation for each function in the utils module simply specifies a return value for cases that are not real triangles, the Triangle class is more strict and raises an exception if your sides lengths are not appropriate:

>>> from trianglelib.shape import Triangle
>>> Triangle(1, 1, 3)
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValueError: one side is too long to make a triangle


If you are not sanitizing your user input to verify that the three side lengths they are giving you are safe, then be prepared to trap this exception and report the error to your user.