6.4. Find Zero

Write a function named find_zero which takes a list of integers as argument. The function returns an integer as the index of first occurrence of zero in the given list. If the given list does not contain any zeros, then the function must return -1.

Note: You can not use any built-in function that gives the index of an element in a list. The equality operator(“==”) is also forbidden for this question.

Sample I/O:

>>> find_zero([1,2,3,4,5])
-1


>>> find_zero([123,35,0,46,2567])
2


>>> find_zero([0,1,0,1,1,0])
0

Show the Answer

def find_zero(numbers):
    index_of_zero = -1
    index_counter = -1
    try:
        for number in numbers:
            index_counter += 1
            temporary = 32/number   # Apply division to catch ZeroDivisionError exception.
    except ZeroDivisionError:       # 32 and temporary have no meaning here. They can be anything.
        index_of_zero = index_counter
    return index_of_zero