[Tutor] Yahtzee-like Program

[Allan Crooks]

> I've written a small program that is a lot like Yahtzee, without the
> pretty graphics.  It's more of a command line style game.  It works
> and obeys all the standard rules.
> 
> However, I know that my 250+ line code is horribly ugly.  But, it is
> the only way I know how to write it.  I would like it if someone would
> look at it and give me some pointers to help clean my code, but I am
> hesitant to post all of it on the Tutor list.
> 
> If you want to look at it, it is available at
> <http://hemlock.centre.edu/~tmbrau00/Yahtzee.txt>

<snip>

Well, there quite a few ways it could be improved (by which, I mean 
"shortened"). :)

You could put in the following method:

def score_single_helper (self, val, cat, letters):
   self.score_single(val=val, cat=cat)
   for letter in letters: self.scored.append (letter)

Then the "if option in Aa, elif option in Bb" and so on would be a lot smaller. :)

Also, I'd also encourage you to use the % operator for strings (so put %s in the 
string itself). That way, you can get out of putting all the messy "...+str(x)+..." 
code.

You might want to split the self.score values into two dictionaries (maybe 
more), one containing the ones - sixes, and the other one for the rest.

Then the following code:

sum=(self.score['ones']+self.score['twos']... <snip>

can become:

def score_top_bonus(self):
    import operators
    sum = reduce (operators.add, self.score.values())

Another point is that if you have an if statement, you don't need to put "else: 
pass", you can just omit that. It's not always necessary to have an else 
statement.
The following line:
 option=raw_input('Please choose [A-M] ')

could be changed to:
  option = raw_input('Please choose [A-M] ').lower()

That will convert the string to lower case. That way, you don't have to worry 
about adding 'M' and 'm' to 'scores'.

Note that I haven't actually run the program, I'm just saying how I'd make it 
smaller. :)

Allan.