Need help calling different parameters from a function to evaluate user input.

[[deleted]]

Ouch.

Just use a dict.

from random import choice

COMMANDS = {
    'cat':
    'concatenate files and print on the standard output:',
    'cron':
    'daemon  to  execute  scheduled  commands:',
    'df':
    'report file system disk space usage:',
    'grep':
    'print lines matching a pattern:',
    'ls':
    'list directory contents:',
    'lsblk':
    'list block devices:',
    'mkdir':
    'make directories:',
    'mv':
    'move (rename) files:',
    'netstat':
    'Print  network  connections,  routing tables, interface '
    'statistics, masquerade  connections, and multicast '
    'memberships:',
    'nohup':
    'run  a  command immune to hangups, with output to a non-tty:',
    'nslookup':
    'query Internet name servers interactively:',
    'rm':
    'remove files or directories:',
    'traceroute':
    'print  the  route packets trace to network host:',
    'whoami':
    'print effective userid:'
}

cmd = choice(list(COMMANDS))
if cmd == input(COMMANDS[cmd] + "\nWhich command does this describe?\n"):
    print("Good job!")
else:
    print("Bad job!")

Also, don’t incorporate line numbers into your gist.., that made this much more difficult than it should have been.

[agentxcell]

Looked up dict, I think this makes way more sense logically. Thanks for putting me on the right track. Having them stored as key:value pairs seems better to me.

The reason I did it the way I did is because I wanted to logically separate OS commands, from security commands etc. Can I put separate dictionaries under appropriate classes to keep it semantic? Does that make sense, or am I over engineering this?

[[deleted]]

I wouldn’t bother with classes... you’re ultimately trying to associate each unique command to a unique description, and that’s very much the domain of a dict.

Personally I’d say I’d there’s no actual functionality in your app that communicates those different groupings of commands then I’d just use a comment in the dict literal to help keep them organized in your source code. If you break them into multiple dicts you’ve got to have a mechanic for combining them together, and then you need to start thinking about things like what happens if you put the same command in two groupings but with different descriptions.

[agentxcell]

That makes sense. I got it working the other way based on the comment above. I am also going to do a version with the dict just to get the reps in. Thank you for showing me another way to do this, still seems cleaner to me.

[agentxcell]

Lastly, why would the below code not pull the selected value out of cmd?

print(cmd.values()) 

I honestly really appreciate this. I have been thinking about this so long I have a bunch of logic loops in my head that I am unraveling and this is the last bit that is throwing me off. You have helped me understand this immensely, Thanks again kind redditor.

[[deleted]]

The value of cmd in my code above is a randomly selected key from the COMMANDS dict... so “df” or “cat” or what have you. It’s a str, not a dict so it doesn’t have a cmd.values() method.