help on ultra newbie program please

[cybernut]

"Andrew Walkingshaw" <andrew-usenet at lexical.org.uk> wrote in message
news:slrnbcnbc2.126.andrew-usenet at athena.jcn.srcf.net...
> In article <HRNya.29$%s1.24774 at news.uswest.net>, cybernut wrote:
> > # Waits until a password has been entered.  Use control-C to break out
with
> > out
> > # the password
> >
> > #Note that this must not be the password so that the
> > # while loop runs at least once.
> > password = "foobar"
> >
> > #note that != means not equal
> > while password != "unicorn":
> >     password = raw_input("Password:")
> > print "Welcome in"
>
> Presumably this is the original program.
>
> What you want is something like:
>
> (program starts - hope the comments are useful)
>
> # set password to be blank initially
> password = ""
> # and create a variable to count the number of failed login attempts
> numfailures = 0
>
> while numfailures < 3:
>     password = raw_input("Password: ")
>     if password == "unicorn":
>         # success, so get out of the loop
>         break
>     else:
>         # increment number of attempts by one
>         numfailures = numfailures + 1
>
> if numfailures == 3:
>     # then the user failed to log in three times
>     print "Access denied."
> else:
>     # numattempts < 3, so no more than two failed attempts
>     # therefore - allow access
>     print "Welcome in."
>
>
> This, when run, produces output which looks like -
>
> adw27 at pond:~/siesta-zrw2o8-large-new 1014 $
> :; python test.py
> Password: unicorn
> Welcome in.
> adw27 at pond:~/siesta-zrw2o8-large-new 1015 $
> :; python test.py
> Password: asd
> Password: asd
> Password: wed
> Access denied.
>
> You might want to investigate the python-tutor at python.org mailing list:
> it's full of people who like to help new programmers with this kind of
> thing!
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> - Andrew
>
> -- 
> Andrew Walkingshaw | andrew-usenet at lexical.org.uk
>

Thanks a bunch Andrew! That makes sense to me. Also appriciate the tip on
that mailing list.