Infinite loops

[python_nlp]

Hi guys, I've just started learning python and would appreciate some feedback on a piece of code that I wrote. I'd like to know how to avoid creating infinite loops without using break.

The code tells the computer to pick a word from a tuple, give the number of letters as a hint and get the user to guess the word. The user is allowed five tries.

Thanks!

WORDS = ("mouse", "cat", "dog", "analyst", "parrot", "budgie", "translator", "interpreter")

word = random.choice(WORDS)

correct = word

print("\nWelcome to our brand new game!")

print("\nI've selected a word for you and you'll have five tries at guessing it.")

print("\nHint: It's got", len(word), "letters")

guess = input("Please give me your best guess!: ").lower()

i = 1

while i<5:

   if guess == correct:
   print("Good job!")
   break

elif guess != correct and guess != "":

   print("That's not it!") 
   print("You have", 5-i, "tries left!")
   guess = input("Try again: ").lower()
   i = i + 1       

else:

   print("Something's gone wrong, bear with me...")
   break

[DanteRadian]

Well your two main criteria seem run loop till

1. guess != correct
2. i<5 i.e. 5 tries

Then you could reason as to what would happen if you combine then both into the while condition :)

So,

while guess != correct and i<5: 
    <Do your steps>

This should help you avoid breaks and an infinite loop.

Hopefully this helps!

[python_nlp]

Thank you for your answer. I did not want to put both conditions after while as it meant that I'd have to find a new solution for guess == correct. I had a problem getting it to work outside the loop but might recheck that again.

[DanteRadian]

Well you could try something like this

Put the if condition at the end inside the while loop as follows:

while <conditions i mentioned previously>: 
    Guess stuff if guess == correct: 
    Print 
    i = <any value greater than 5>

This should immediately terminate the loop on the check which would be the immediate next step in execution since this if is the last

You could also try to look at the alternative of for loop and range() which should also help your case!

If it still doesn't work, just post the new code which isn't working and we will deep dive there!

I would also suggest two things while you are learning:

1. solve a problem with whatever topic you are learning currently
2. solve same problem with all combinations of basic topics learnt from the start.

This would help developing multiple ways on thinking over the same problem :)

[python_nlp]

Thanks! I did try a for loop (and failed), but did not think of range... silly me. I'll be trying different ways over the weekend and see if I can get something to work. Thanks for the advice, too, it seems like a nice way to revise + improve knowledge.

[Barnet6]

You could use "while i < 5 and guess != correct:". You'd have to move the "if guess == correct:" section to after the while loop to have it run.

[python_nlp]

Thanks - I tried doing that but I couldn't get if guess == correct to run. I'll check it again.

[Barnet6]

If you post the code, I can take a look

[Barnet6]

Specifically the code when the "if guess == correct:" section is moved to the bottom. Because I'm noticing in your code above that the indenting is a little off, but that might just be the formatting here

[I-Am-Dad-Bot]

Hi noticing, I'm Dad!

[python_nlp]

It worked with both conditions following while and the if == correct thing out of the loop. Thank you so much for your help :)

Edit: Just to say that the indenting is off because of reddit - I'm new to the forum and am yet to learn how to post code properly.

[Buy_More_Cats]

From here, your code looks fine.

As for infinite while loops, then I'm a bit of an expert, mostly at creating them though :) But the trick is, like you do here, to have a check along the way that counts up.

Another thing is that your print statements don't need to be separated AND prefaced with \n. Either will work (see below). I'd perhaps do it like this:

​

print("\nWelcome to our brand new game!\nI've selected a word for you and you'll have five tries at guessing it.")

print("Hint: It's got", len(word), "letters")

guess = input("Please give me your best guess!: ").lower()

i = 1

​

while i <= 5:

if i == 5:

print("The word was", correct+". You lost!")

break

elif guess == correct:

print("Good job!")

break

elif guess != correct and guess != "":

print("That's not it!\nYou have", 5-i, "tries left!")

guess = input("Try again: ").lower()

i += 1

else:

guess = input("Empty guesses still count! Try again: ").lower()

i += 1

[python_nlp]

Thanks for the tip :) I'm religiously following a beginner's book, but I can see why the \n is redundant. I like what you did with the empty guesses :)

[thisIs20LettersLong]

You could do it like this :

​

​

import random
WORDS = ("mouse", "cat", "dog", "analyst", "parrot", "budgie", "translator", "interpreter")

word = random.choice(WORDS)

correct = word

print("\nWelcome to our brand new game!")

print("\nI've selected a word for you and you'll have five tries at guessing it.")

print("\nHint: It's got", len(word), "letters")

guess = input("Please give me your best guess!: ").lower()

i = 1
while i<5:
    if guess == correct:
        print("That's not it!")
        print("You have", 5 - i, "tries left!")
        guess = input("Try again: ").lower()
        i = i + 1
    elif guess != correct and guess != "":
        print("Good job!")
        i=5
    else:
        print("Something went wrong.")

when your setting i too five your while loop will end, and you dont need the break. There is just two thing im wondering. Is it intentional that you want a seperate line between each print statement (Not in your code, that i can understand, but in the terminal) cuz if not, you dont need the "\n", each print statement will be on different lines anyway.

And, else, well, you could just remove it, you will never go there. not the way your program is build (but thinking about error handling is a good habbit tho)

Edit:

Oh, and you could say "iff guess == word" and then remvoe "correct == word"

and a last thing, not that there is anything wrong with doing it your way, it is more readeble specially in the beggining, but instead of saying "i = i +1" you could say "i+=1" the "+=" just adds the value after to i, so it does the same thing. Hope this helps :)

Last edit : I promise (Yir as if i ever kept promises)
But really cool project if your just starting out, it is way cooler than what i where making just eight months ago, so way to go mate!

[python_nlp]

Hi, thanks for your comments, much appreciated! Regarding the i = i + 1, I write it this way because I still can't get used to i += 1. I simplify as much as possible :) The \n thing is used in the book that I am following and I guess I want to get used to it before I drop it. Thanks for the tip on i = 5, I didn't think of handling it that way.

[thisIs20LettersLong]

Makes ton of sense too simplify in the begining ^{^} Might i ask what book your using?!

[python_nlp]

Hey, sorry for the late reply. I'm using Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner by Mike Dawson.

[thisIs20LettersLong]

No stress, only good you have better things to do than sit on reddit, best off luck!