1

This is my first post ever about programming! Folks, when i execute this algorithm (a guessing game), it doesnt stop asking me for more inputs, even when i write "quit", that was supposed to be the quiting word. The "break" order doesnt work, and i can't find out why. Maybe it works, but when it quits the loop, it executes the "startgame()" at the bottom, but i need this "startgame()" at the bottom to make the game run for the first time, since the game is inside a function and i need to call it to start the game. 

import random

def startgame():
    a = random.randint (1,10)
    cont = 0

    while True:
        b = input("Guess a number: ")
        if b == 'quit':
            break
        elif int(b) > a:
            print("Too high!")
            cont += 1
            True
        elif int(b) < a:
            print ("Too low!")
            cont += 1
            True
        elif int(b) == a:
            print ("You got it right!")
            print ('You needed ',cont,'guesses!')
            startgame()

startgame()

Any ideas about how to solve this?

Alex Taylor
  • 8,343
  • 4
  • 25
  • 40
Rafael Souza
  • 11
  • 1

3 Answers3

2

Your code has a few small issues, but it actually works, you just didn't test enough to find your actual problem.

The issues:

  • the True lines don't do anything, you don't need them for the while loop; the while will evaluate the True right after it and loop forever.
  • you're mixing single and double quotes for your strings - that gets hard to read and confusing quickly, so you're better off using one style, preferably whatever PEP8 recommends. https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

The problem:

  • your break works just fine; try running your script and entering 'quit' at the first prompt, it quits as expected.
  • the reason it appears not to work is because you restart the entire game by calling the startgame function again after winning the game. This causes a new, nested call from within the game (think 'Inception') and when the game breaks, it ends up on the previous level.

A solution would be to remove the call to startgame() and instead wrapping the whole thing in a second while, for example like this:

import random


def startgame():
    b = 0
    while b != 'quit':
        a = random.randint(1, 10)
        cont = 0

        while True:
            b = input('Guess a number: ')
            if b == 'quit':
                break
            elif int(b) > a:
                print('Too high!')
                cont += 1
            elif int(b) < a:
                print('Too low!')
                cont += 1
            elif int(b) == a:
                print('You got it right!')
                print('You needed ', cont, 'guesses!')


startgame()
Grismar
  • 27,561
  • 4
  • 31
  • 54
  • This code fails in Python 2. I believe it is the same problem as the original poster. The result is `TypeError: int() argument must be a string or a number, not 'Quitter'`. – Alex Taylor Aug 29 '18 at 05:41
  • I agree the `startgame` call needs to be removed. – Alex Taylor Aug 29 '18 at 05:45
  • When i execute this code, i keep geting the same random number. Something is not right! – Rafael Souza Aug 29 '18 at 14:35
  • @AlexTaylor that problem does not apply to this script. The script works on Python 2 as expected. The message seems to suggest you're running code from the quitter module from "Programming Python, 3rd Edition." @AlexTaylor the startgame() call is not the problem; but you can remove it, if you remove the code from the function. @RafaelSouza the default for `PYTHONHASHSEED` is to be disabled in Python 2. This causes the random function to always start with the same value. May vary depending on the distribution. Provide a seed yourself (e.g. timestamp) to get a new sequence every time. – Grismar Oct 17 '18 at 00:31
0

just remove the startgame() from inside the loop and replace it by break

import random

def startgame():

    a = random.randint (1,10)
    cont = 0

    while True:
        b = input("Guess a number: ")
        if b == 'quit':
            break
        elif int(b) > a:
            print("Too high!")
            cont += 1

        elif int(b) < a:
            print ("Too low!")
            cont += 1

       elif int(b) == a:
            print ("You got it right!")
            print ('You needed ',cont,'guesses!')
            break # remove this break statement if you want to restart it again after winning  

startgame ()
abhi krishnan
  • 821
  • 6
  • 20
0

For times like these, I usually use a simple control variable and run the loop on it. For ex:

right_guess=False
while not right_guess:

and then just go

if guess=right:
    right_guess=True
    break
Weekday
  • 44
  • 3