Why is my if statement not correctly reading the input value?

Question

I'm writing a simple program for something, and I have some lines that go

helpme = input("Select a number:")

if helpme in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]:
  print ("Okay then.")
elif helpme == 6:
  print ("Are you sure?")
else:
  print ("Please enter a valid option")

However, no matter the input for the variable "helpme", the code always returns the "Please enter a valid option" line. Am I doing something wrong? I have already attempted using individual elif statements for each number, and also using a print statement to print the value of "helpme" to check it, and everything looks like it should run fine.

the result of `input` is **always** a `str` object, which will never be equal to an `int` object. — juanpa.arrivillaga, Nov 13 '19 at 19:10

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 13 '19 at 19:11

1

This should work, just need to explicitly cast the input to an int.

helpme = int(input("Select a number:"))

if helpme in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]:
  print ("Okay then.")
elif helpme == 6:
  print ("Are you sure?")
else:
  print ("Please enter a valid option")

answered Nov 13 '19 at 19:11

hysoftwareeng

497
4
15

Thanks, it worked. Is this because "input" saves the input in a different format? – Kenny Nov 13 '19 at 19:14
@Kenny Truong Np, please accept the answer to mark the question as resolved. – hysoftwareeng Nov 13 '19 at 19:16

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 13 '19 at 19:13

helpme is a string while you are comparing to integers. Either make helpme an int:

helpme = int(input("Select a number:"))

if helpme in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]:
  print ("Okay then.")
elif helpme == 6:
  print ("Are you sure?")
else:
  print ("Please enter a valid option")

Or compare to strings:

helpme = input("Select a number:")

if helpme in ["1", "2", "3", "4", "5"]:
  print ("Okay then.")
elif helpme == "6":
  print ("Are you sure?")
else:
  print ("Please enter a valid option")

Why is my if statement not correctly reading the input value?

2 Answers2