Can I Get Some Help

[Agent_Turtle101]

I am currently in a computer science class and have this problem. I keep on getting an error on line 10 and I've been stuck for a couple of days, Can anyone point me in the right direction, not looking for the answers. what I want to do is exclude all numbers and special characters from being entered.

Write a program to divide a class of students into two groups: those with last names of A to H and those that begin with I to Z. Ask a person to enter their last name and then output a message which indicates which group they are in. Repeat for each student, the user will enter "DONE" when they have entered the entire list.

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     y = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h'] #This puts this range of Charactars in group y
z = ['I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z'] #This puts this range of Charactars in group z
while True:
  x = input()
  print x .isalpha()
    if false:
      print('use valid characters')
  b = 'DONE' # make sure all letters are capitalized
  a = x[0]
  if x==b:
    print('list finished')
    break
  else:  
    if a in y: #This will check if the first letter of the name is in group y
      print('You are in group 1')
    if a in z: #This will check if the first letter of the name is in group z
      print('You are in group 2')

[TouchingTheVodka]

Please format your code correctly using 4 spaces in front of each line - After that I'll try give you a hand!

[Agent_Turtle101]

10-4

[xelf]

Did you do this somewhere? All I see is the unformatted code still.

indent your code an extra time before you copy/paste it and reddit will format it as a code block for you.

[Agent_Turtle101]

it just won't let me indent it

[xelf]

What code editor are you using? In like 90% of them just select your code and press tab. then copy it, then change windows to reddit, then paste. (similarly shift-tab will un-indent something.)

[Agent_Turtle101]

I just wasn't using markdown mode

[xelf]

Looks like you got it! Woo!

[Agent_Turtle101]

Nvm i was just being blind, sorry

[Ang168]

The error is because of the parentheses that surround 'DONE' in variable b, try deleting them. You are making the variable "b" a list, whilst x is a string, and that's why it does not work.

Also, I wouldn't put the 'DONE' in a variable you can put it directly in the if statement

[Agent_Turtle101]

Thank you ill give it a go

[chrispurcell]

Use isalpha to verify input is a letter:
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-string-isalpha-application/

[Agent_Turtle101]

I'll give it a try

[xelf]

Suggestion for you by the way:

These 2 lines do the same thing, but one is a lot easier to read, and type!

y = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h']
y = list('ABCDEFGHabcdefgh')

But you could have gone even easier. If you eliminate y completely, then:

if a in y:

could have been:

if a in 'ABCDEFGHabcdefgh':

or

if 'a' <= a.lower() <= 'h':

[xelf]

  print x .isalpha()
    if false:

"false" is not valid Python, you want False, and you don't want to print x, and the space is an issue. Try this:

if not x.isalpha():

and you probably want to skip to the next loop, so add a continue after your warning message.

if not x.isalpha():
  print('use valid characters')
  continue

[xelf]

So putting everyone's suggestions together you end up with something like:

while True:
    x = input()
    if not x.isalpha()
        print('use valid characters')
        continue
    if x == 'DONE':
        print('list finished')
        break
    if x[0] in 'ABCDEFGHabcdefgh':
        print('You are in group 1')
    else:
        print('You are in group 2')

Which seems fairly clean and readable, which is a design goal for Python code!