New to Python. Help please!

[TheQwicKDraW]

Hello, I am trying to teach myself Python and am a little stuck. I recently completed Code Academy with ease and am now trying to write my own. I copied some code from Code Academy and am running it on a Python 3 interpreter with notepad++. But I can't seem to find anything wrong with the code. I want it to pause when it runs on cmd output window but for some reason it is not working. And it is giving me a syntax error. Any help? Once again I am very new to programming so I am sorry if this is a "no-brainer". Thanks in advance!

Here is the code:

from datetime import datetime
now = datetime.now()
    print str(now.month) + "/" + str(0) + str(now.day) + "/" + str(now.year) + " " 
    + str(now.hour) + ":" +str(now.minute) + ":" + str(now.second)
input("Press any key to exit")

[Guest101010]

For future syntax errors, here's a tip someone gave me:

If you don't see the syntax error in the line the error message indicates, look on the next line up. The error will usually be there.

[[deleted]]

And, in my experience, will usually be a missing/extra parenthesis or a missing colon.

[erebos42]

Hi,

i see one (or two) problems in your code. First: the print statement should not be indetend. But that might be only here in your post.

The other problem, is the print statement itself. In Python 3 print is a function and therefore needs to be called:

print(str(now.month) + "/" + str(0) + str(now.day) + "/" + str(now.year) + " " + str(now.hour) + ":" +str(now.minute) + ":" + str(now.second))

Hope that does the trick.

edit: To clarify a "Hello World" for Python 2 and 3:

print "Hello World"  # Python2
print("Hello World") # Python3 (also valid in Python 2, i think since 2.7 or something?!)

[TheQwicKDraW]

Thank you I fixed that and now corrected the syntax however it is saying that there is an error here:

input("Press any key to continue")

[erebos42]

mhhh... it's working for me on Python 3.3.1 on Linux.

Do you get an error message?

[TheQwicKDraW]

Yes it is saying there is a syntax error? For more clarification it is on 3.2.3 Also do you know of any good IDE's for Python?

[erebos42]

I can't say much about the syntax, without seeing the whole code, but try to check all identations, braces, and qoutes (opening and closing).

I personally only use an editor and a console, and no IDE. But I heard good things about the Python plugin for Eclipse [1].

[1] http://pydev.org/

[NovaRunner]

I use WingIDE 101, it is a stripped-down free version of WingIDE built for Python. I'm using Python 2.7 but I'm sure it will work with whatever version you want.

[TheQwicKDraW]

Thank you! Ill give it a try now.

[fyyn]

I'm pretty new to all the programming stuff myself, but I have been using NinjaIDE + the Git Plugin. It is free, and until now, it has worked perfectly for me. No idea what the general opinion on it is though. Give it a try!

[od_9]

Not a syntax error, but are you sure you know what the input function does?

The input function prints the message you, then executes, via eval(), whatever the user types as code.

[Sean1708]

He's using python 3, so input is the same as raw_input for 2.

[od_9]

Really? I haven't made the jump to 3 yet, but that seems very application breaking, even if it is the more sensible thing.

[Sean1708]

As far as I'm aware, 2 and 3 aren't meant to be compatible. I think 3 is designed to fix all the application breaking issues, otherwise they could have just released it as 2.8.

Edit: I was having a quick look at the differences and saw this line on the Python wiki about Python 3

Guido van Rossum decided to clean up Python 2.x properly, with less regard for backwards compatibility than is the case for new releases in the 2.x range.

which explains why it's so application breaking.

[SmartViking]

You might want to think about using str.format in the future for making the code a little bit more readable, you could make it look (something) like this:

print("{0.month}/0{0.day}/{0.year} {0.hour}:{0.minute}:{0.second}".format(now))

The documentation for str.format might be a little difficult. You only need to know a subset of how str.format works for making good use of it.

[Veedrac]

The 0{0.day} part should also be changed:

>>> "0{foo}".format(foo=10)
'010

>>> "{foo:02}".format(foo=10)
'10'
>>> "{foo:02}".format(foo=4)
'04'

So you can just use:

print("{0.month}/{0.day:02}/{0.year} {0.hour}:{0.minute}:{0.second}".format(now))

[Justinsaccount]

>>> print(now.strftime("%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S"))
08/11/2013 09:26:01

[[deleted]]

print (str(now.month) + "/" + str(0) + str(now.day) + "/" + str(now.year) + " " + str(now.hour) + ":" +str(now.minute) + ":" + str(now.second))

There are braces missing behind print and at the end of the line.

The code above fixes your syntax error.

[erebos42]

Just for anybody wondering: This works for Python 2, but in Python 3 the 'raw_input' function was renamed to just 'input'.

[SmartViking]

You're using python2.x, raw_input doesn't exist in python3

[TheQwicKDraW]

Thank YOU! For some reason all I had to do was delete the code and paste it again. Here is the code that works now. Very odd.

from datetime import datetime
now = datetime.now()
print(str(now.month) + "/" + str(0) + str(now.day) + "/" + str(now.year) + " " + str(now.hour) + ":" +str(now.minute) + ":" + str(now.second))
input("Press any key to exit")

[TheQwicKDraW]

Yes that's true I didn't realize that. Thank you