How do I fix the "turtle.terminator error?

Question

I wanted to make a blinking "Press SPACE to start!" screen and if SPACE was pressed, the program should shut down but I always get the turtle.terminator error. Can someone help me please?

from turtle import *
import pygame
while True:
    x = 0
    penup()
    tracer(0)
    if x == 0:
        color("black")
        goto(-80,-170)
        write("Press SPACE to start!",font=50)
        update()
        pygame.time.delay(1*800)
        x = 1
    if x == 1:
        color("white")
        goto(-90,-180)
        begin_fill()
        goto(90,-180)
        goto(90,-140)
        goto(-90,-140)
        goto(-90,-180)
        end_fill()
        update()
        x = 0
        pygame.time.delay(1*800)
    def close():
        bye()
    onkey(close(),"Space")
done()

After integrating advice from the comments, it still raises an error when I use onkey(close,...) instead of onkey(close(),..).

Answer 1

There are a few issues here. A word of advice: work in small bursts and run your code often to validate all of your assumptions at each step of the way. This code looks as if it was all written in one fell swoop, and once it didn't work, there was too much complexity to isolate the bugs. Had you run the code to test it often as you went along, you'd see those errors immediately and the solutions would be more obvious.

Try to minimize the problem space by breaking your functionality into small pieces and validating each one.

First, let me provide my solution:

import turtle


def render_white_screen():
    win.ontimer(render_press_space, delay_ms)
    t.clear()
    turtle.update()


def render_press_space():
    win.ontimer(render_white_screen, delay_ms)
    t.write(
        "Press SPACE to start!",
        move=False,
        align="center",
        font=("Arial", 20, "normal"),
    )
    turtle.update()


delay_ms = 800
turtle.tracer(0)
win = turtle.Screen()
win.onkey(turtle.bye, "space")
win.listen()
t = turtle.Turtle()
t.hideturtle()
t.color("black")
render_press_space()
turtle.mainloop()

Turtle is surprisingly not especially beginner-friendly and has a huge list of gotchas, so it's important to check the docs and do research on Stack Overflow as soon as you encounter an error.

Errors:

• turtle.onkey(some_func(), "some key") is incorrect (assuming some_func isn't a higher-order function) because you're calling some_func rather than passing it as the handler. This should be turtle.onkey(some_func, "some key"). This happens to trigger the terminator error because terminator occurs when you run turtle code after exiting, which is what your handler does. See Python Turtle.Terminator even after using exitonclick() and onkeypress( ) function in turtle module problem.
• turtle.onkey(space_handler, "Space") should be turtle.onkey(space_handler, "space") (lowercase). See Couldn't get rid of (_tkinter.TclError: bad event type or keysym "UP") problem.
• You must call turtle.listen() to activate key handlers that you've registered. See Turtle.onkeypress not working (Python).

Suggestions/better practices:

• Always use import turtle, never from turtle import *. The reason is that from turtle import * dumps 160+ functions into the global namespace, causing potential clashes with your own functions. Many of these functions have common names like update and reset that can easily cause confusion and bugs. Turtle has a module-level instance ostensibly to avoid confusion for beginners, but it only winds up introducing more problems in the long run than simply creating a turtle instance.
• Don't import pygame just to sleep. Python has a native function sleep available in the time module. But even better is to use turtle's ontimer callback as shown above.
• You can clear the screen with t.clear().

Answer 2

It is "space", not "Space". Also, it is still correct to use onkey(close, ...).

The complete function would be onkey(close, "space")