help on ultra newbie program please

[phil hunt]

On Wed, 21 May 2003 10:30:06 -0600, cybernut <cybernut at uswest.net> wrote:
>I'm a network admin, but have had an itch to learn programming for a while
>and finally started looking at which language to begin with. After reading
>for a while it sounded like python was a really good one so I went to
>www.python.org and started going through the "A Non-Programmer's Tutorial
>for Python" guide by Josh Cogliati. I already have a linux box running that
>I am using for this...
>
>I'm kind of stuck on one of the excersizes though and I hate to ask for help
>on this because I want to figure it out on my own, but I've wasted too much
>time on it. It is basically taking his Password.py code and modifying it so
>that it kicks you out if an incorrect password is entered 3 times. Now, I
>can get it to kick ya out if 3 bad passwords are entered ,but I cannot get
>it to do that and also end it if the correct password is put in. It will
>take the correct password and ask for another password again which is
>stupid. It seems like I need a loop within a loop, but Im not seeing it.
>Anyone able to shed some light on this for me? Maybe Im not cut out for
>this, but I wanna give it a good go.

Use this pseudocode:

   password := "whatever"
   tries := 0
   userIn := false #user is in the system?
   loop forever:
      entry := getUsersEntry()
      tries := tries + 1
      if entry == password:
         print "You are in!"
         userIn := true
         exit loop
      if tries >= 3:
         print "You entered 3 bad entries"
         exit loop

In Python this is:

   password = "whatever"
   tries = 0
   userIn = 0 #user is in the system?
   while 1:
      entry = raw_input("Enter Password:")
      tries = tries + 1
      if entry == password:
         print "You are in!"
         userIn = 1
         break
      if tries >= 3:
         print "You entered 3 bad entries"
         break

Note the similarities between Python and pseudocode!

(BTW, I'm not sure which version of Python you are using; on later 
versions you can say things like:

   userIn = true

and:

   tries += 1

-- 
Philip Hunt <philh at cabalamat.org>

Interested in adventure holidays in Spain? 
Look at: <http://www.cabalamat.org/advcon/>