How can I define a function - say, def polyToString(poly) - to return a string containing the polynomial poly in standard form? For example: the polynomial represented by [-1, 2, -3, 4, -5] would be returned as: "-5x**4 + 4x**3 -3x**2 + 2x**1 - 1x**0" def polyToString(poly): standard_form='' n=len(poly) - 1 while n >=0: if poly[n]>=0: if n==len(poly)-1: standard_form= standard_form + ' '+ str(poly[n]) + 'x**%d'%n else: standard_form= standard_form + ' + '+str(poly[n]) + 'x**%d'%n else: standard_form= standard_form + ' - ' + str(abs(poly[n])) + 'x**' + str(n) n=n-1 return standard_form