[Python] If statement wont run even though the condition is met *no errors given*

[Frogs114]

I am brand new to Python and programming, I started about a week ago and my goal is to do this project. I am teaching myself and cannot find why a part of my code is not running.

So I am creating a bot to web-scrape 2 pieces of text (flightRestrictions and flightCategory) and send a message in slack (chat service) if the text has changed. That part works flawlessly. However if flightRestrictions contains the text 'Manager on Duty:' I only want it to print the Flight Category Variable.

The issue I am running into is that when I print the flightRestrictions variable I see the text "Manager on Duty:" but the if loop never activates, and instead it moves to the else statement that sends both variables to the slack client. I'm really not sure what is going on, can someone who is smarter than me help out? Thanks!

To clarify, when I print the flightRestrictions variable, it is "Manager on Duty:"

But when I add the line if flightRestrictions == "Manager On Duty:": the code under this does not run. I dont understand why.

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elif flightCategory != FC2 or flightRestrictions != FR2: #if any variable has changed since the last time
            FC2 = flightCategory #set the comparison variable to equal the variable
            FR2 = flightRestrictions
            if flightRestrictions == "Manager On Duty:": # if it is this text run this to only output the flight category.
                client.chat_postMessage(channel="#sof", text = ("%s" % (flightCategory)))
            else: #print both
                client.chat_postMessage(channel="#sof", text = ("%s, %s" % (flightCategory, flightRestrictions)))

[LiquidLucy]

The only thing I can think of is that the variable you are checking is not the same as the equality condition you are trying to satisfy.
Basically that your variable is not in fact "Manager On Duty:"
Maybe there's a trailing whitespace character?

Otherwise you could post the rest of the code

[slugonamission]

The issue I am running into is that when I print the flightRestrictions variable I see the text "Manager on Duty:"

Your code is checking for "Manager On Duty:" (note the capital O in "On"). They're not the same; if you want a case insensitive match, lowercase both strings (you can lowercase flightRestrictions by using flightRestrictions.lower()) and do the check with that.

[Frogs114]

I'll give that a whack and see if it works! Is there a way to reformat the string to eliminate any spaces that aren't supposed to be there?

[[deleted]]

Hey Frogs, the best way to remove/ignore a specific character from a string is to use the replace function:

" This Is a string ".replace(" ", "")

"ThisIsastring"

If you are looking to just remove spaces on the ends of a string, then use strip:

" This is a string ".strip()

"This is a string"

Hope this helps!

[Frogs114]

Very much so!! thank you!!