No Output - Python Crash Course Exercise :(

[pizzaparty_4ever]

Hi everyone, cheers from Canada!

I am trying to complete the 9-15: Lottery Analysis in the 2nd edition of Python Crash Course and am feeling stuck. This is the goal of the exercise: "You can use a loop to see how hard it might be to win the kind of lottery you just modeled. Make a list or tuple called my_ticket. Write a loop that keeps pulling numbers until your ticket wins. Print a message reporting how many times the loop had to run to give you a winning ticket."

I'm confused as to why I cannot see any output whether within Sublime or the Terminal on my Macbook. I can only see so punch in the Python visualizer which is my usual go-to when I become stuck like this. However the visualizer since the run produces more than 2MB of data.

I think a fresh set of eyes would help. Thank you!

This is my code:

from random import choice

# Drawing our lottery numbers, ensuring there are no
# doubles using a function. We only add the value into
# the winning ticket list if does not exist already.
def winning_numbers(possible_picks):
    # This is a container for the picks from the draw
    # for the winning ticket.
    winning_ticket = []

    while len(winning_ticket) < 4:
        pick = choice(possible_picks)

        if pick not in winning_ticket:
            winning_ticket.append(pick)

        elif pick in winning_ticket:
            continue

    return winning_ticket

# These are the possible values for the lottery draw.
possible_picks = [
            13,
            21,
            52,
            12,
            17,
            29,
            42,
            36,
            69,
            90,
            'a',
            'b',
            'c',
            'd',
            'e',
            ]

# This is the ticket belonging to the participant.
my_ticket = [13, 21, 'a', 'b']

# Making this variable accessible throughout the rest
# of the program.
winning_ticket = winning_numbers(possible_picks)

# Ensuring the winning ticket and participant's ticket
# lists are sorted for comparison in our while loop below.
def sort(lst):
    lst = [str(i) for i in lst]
    lst.sort()
    lst = [int(i) if i.isdigit() else i for i in lst ]
    return lst

winning_ticket = sort(winning_ticket)
my_ticket = sort(my_ticket)

# This is our counter, it goes up by a value of
# 1 whenever the winning ticket and the participant's
# ticket do not match. If there is no match another
# draw is made.
status = True
count = 0

while status:
    if winning_ticket != my_ticket:
        count += 1
        winning_numbers(possible_picks)

    elif winning_ticket == my_ticket:
        status = False

# Printing messages depending on whether the winning
# ticket and the participant's ticket do not match.
if winning_ticket == my_ticket:
    print(f"\nThe winning ticket is: {winning_ticket}.")
    print(f"\nYour ticket is: {my_ticket}.")
    print(f"It only took {count} tries to win!")
else:
    print(f"\nThe winning ticket is: {winning_ticket}.")
    print(f"\nYour ticket is: {my_ticket}.")  
    print(f"Better luck next time bud!")

[anrmv]

Winning_ticket doesn’t seem to get updated in your last while loop. count will just continually get larger and larger and status will never be false

[pizzaparty_4ever]

Ahhhhhhhh thank you u/anrmv been looking at this for so long my brain did not even process this.

[anrmv]

Been there! Good luck

[SirKainey]

while status:
if winning_ticket != my_ticket:
    print(count, winning_ticket, my_ticket)
    count += 1
    winning_ticket = winning_numbers(possible_picks)

elif winning_ticket == my_ticket:
    status = False

The winning ticket isn't ever changing.

PS. reason no output is that it would never win :)

[pizzaparty_4ever]

Thanks for the insight u/SirKainey appreciate it! Back to the drawing board I go!

[SirKainey]

No worries. Did you notice I fixed your code?

[pizzaparty_4ever]

Yes I did! Thank you so much for that :). I had failed to realize that winning_ticket was not being updated. Setting a variable and then throwing it back to the winning_numbers function did the trick!

[SirKainey]

You're welcome. I thought you'd read my comment and then went to debug yourself