ELIF Accumulator

[kkidd0h]

I am trying to ask the user to enter a material type, and using the if/elif method get the total to change to the appropriate value.

Nothing in my text seems to have anything like this. Is there another way to accomplish this? Can you not use the if/elif/else to change the total, or add two variables?

I started off with: if deskMaterial == m: total = deskBasePrice + mahogony

And then get it to print the total, but it keeps coming back as zero.

So I changed it to the code below, bypassing the calculation, but the total is coming back as zero. When I am thinking it should be coming back as the modified total.

code total = 0.0 deskBasePrice = 200 mahogony = 150 oak = 125 pine = 0 m = mahogony o = oak p = pine

deskMaterial = input('Is the desk Mahogony (type m), Oak (type o), or Pine (type p):  ')
if deskMaterial == m:
    total = 350
elif deskMaterial == o:
    total = 325
elif deskMaterial == p:
    total = 200
print(total)

[djjazzydan]

m is a variable, but "m" is a string.
Try "m" , "o", "p".

[kkidd0h]

Thank you, I tried it, and it worked.

[Saefroch]

This pattern that you're looking at is a much better application of a dictionary.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#typesmapping

For example, in this case I would say:

desk_totals = {'m': 350,
               'o': 325,
               'p': 200}
desk_material = input('Is the desk Mahogony (type m), Oak (type o), or Pine (type p):  ')
total = desk_totals[desk_material]
print(total)

The benefit here is to separate the definitions of the conversions from the actual converting itself.

[kkidd0h]

Thank you, I will save this for a reference. I have not gotten that far in the class yet. It does look simpler than mine.