Horribly noobful string question

[SeNTry]

"Xavier Morel" <xavier.morel at masklinn.net> wrote in message 
news:dnn2g8$l12$1 at aphrodite.grec.isp.9tel.net...
> Fredrik Lundh wrote:
>> "SeNTry" wrote:
>>
>>> My first post here as I just begin to learn programming in general and
>>> python in particular.  I have all the noobie confused questions, but as 
>>> I
>>> work thru the tutorials I'm sure I'll find most my answers.
>>>
>>> This one is eluding me tho... I am working in the tutorials, writing 
>>> scripts
>>> as presented and then modifying and expanding on my own to try to learn.
>>> I'm working with one that asks the user to 'guess a number I'm 
>>> thinking',
>>> and with simple while loop, flow control and operands, returning an 
>>> answer
>>> to guess again or you got it.  I've added a 'playagain' function I've 
>>> got
>>> working, but what I want is to stop the program from crashing when 
>>> someone
>>> enters a string value instead of a int value.  I know strings are 
>>> immutable,
>>> and they can be changed to an int equivalent, but I just want the script 
>>> to
>>> recognize the input as a string and print a simple "that's not a number, 
>>> try
>>> again' type of message.  I can't find the syntax to include in the
>>> if/elif/else block to include a line that says something like,
>>
>> assuming you're using raw_input() to get the guess, you always
>> have a string (in python's sense of that word).
>>
>> what you seem to want is to check if the string contains a number
>> or not.  here's one way to do this:
>>
>>     guess = raw_input("make a guess: ")
>>     if guess == secret:
>>         print "congratulations!"
>>     elif not guess.isdigit():
>>         print "that's not a number! please guess again!"
>>     ...
>>
>
> that, or just write something like
>
> guess = raw_input("Make your guess > ")
> try:
> if int(guess) == secret:
> # ok
> except ValueError:
> # no good

>>
>> assuming you're using raw_input() to get the guess, you always
>> have a string (in python's sense of that word).
>>
>> what you seem to want is to check if the string contains a number
>> or not.  here's one way to do this:
>>
>>     guess = raw_input("make a guess: ")
>>     if guess == secret:
>>         print "congratulations!"
>>     elif not guess.isdigit():
>>         print "that's not a number! please guess again!"
>>     ...
>>
>
> that, or just write something like
>
> guess = raw_input("Make your guess > ")
> try:
> if int(guess) == secret:
> # ok
> except ValueError:
> # no good

Sry for late reply, I've been out of town.  Thanks for the responses, I'm 
just sitting down to try these out.  I'm kind of surprised there's not a 
more obvious way to handle simply identifying strings.

Anyways, here's the original code snippet from a tut. and then my modified 
effort.  I was using input instead of raw_input.  Looking at it now I'm not 
even sure why I did some of the stuff I did HAHA!  I just made functions for 
convenience and practice.  I'm sure it's laughable, but maybe you can see 
what I was doing and tell me what other errors I made just for learning...

Everything seems to work well, except when the playagain function in my 
modified code gets a '2' input to quit, it prints 'aw, ok bye then' and then 
the next line is the print from the loopfunc if statement, "looping while 
statement now complete".  If I remove the again="" line in the playagain 
function, it prints 2 times... wierd.  I put this in there because I 
suspected that the variable was remaining and wanted to clear it at the 
start of the function, but I've now read that the variable in a function is 
destroyed when the function ends... is this right?  My brain hurts...

ORIGINAL
number = 24
guess = int(raw_input('Enter an integer : '))

if guess == number:
	print 'Congratulations, you guessed it.' # New block starts here
	print "(but you do not win any prizes!)" # New block ends here
elif guess < number:
	print 'No, it is a little higher than that' # Another block
	# You can do whatever you want in a block ...
else:
	print 'No, it is a little lower than that'
	# you must have guess > number to reach here

print 'Done'
# This last statement is always executed, after the if statement is 
executed**MODIFIED**#define two functions first, then use them.def 
loopfunc(looping):    while looping:        guess= input("guess a number. 
see if you can guess what I'm thinking")        if guess == number: 
print "you got it!"            looping=False            playagain("") 
print "looping while statement now complete" #for clarification when running 
elif guess < number:            print "nope, a little higher!"        else: 
print "no, a little lower!"def playagain(again):    again=""   #removing 
this line make the 'looping while..' statement print 2 times    again= 
input("would you like to play again? type '1' for yes and '2' for no")    if 
again==1:        print "great!"        loopfunc(True)    elif again==2: 
print "aww!  Ok, bye then"        return    else:        print "that's not a 
1 or a 2!  Try again!"        playagain("")number=24loopfunc(True)