[Tutor] First script

[Bruce Sass]

Hi,

On Tue, 16 Jan 2001, John Precedo wrote:
> Robert L Hinks sent in the following script and asked
> > How would you change it and why?
> 
> r = "kill -HUP `ps cax|grep inetd|awk '{print $1}'`"  #
> restarts the daemon
> n = "Inetd not restarted"
> w = "Answer needs to be 'yes' or 'no'. Try again!"
> 
> yesAnswers = ["yes", "YES", "Y", "y"]
> noAnswers = ["no", "NO", "N", "n"]
> validAnswers = yesAnswers + noAnswers
> answer = ""
> 
> answer = raw_input("Do you want to restart the INETD daemon?
> (yes/no): ")
> 
> while answer not in validAnswers:
>     print w; print
>     answer = raw_input("Do you want to restart the INETD
> daemon? (yes/no): ")
> 
> if answer in yesAnswers:
>     print r
> else:
>     print n

I'd want to do this (starting with John's code):

---8<---
import string

def getYNanswer(ystring, nstring, qprompt=""):
    """Get "yes" or "no" interactively.

    Returns lowercase answer or ""

    """

    yesAnswers = ["yes", "y"]
    noAnswers = ["no", "n"]
    exitAnswers = ["q", "quit", "e", "exit", "x"]
    helpAnswers = ["h", "help", "?"]
    validAnswers = yesAnswers + noAnswers + exitAnswers + helpAnswers

    answer = ""
    while 1:
        if answer in yesAnswers:
            print ystring
            break
        elif answer in noAnswers:
            print nstring
            break
        elif answer in exitAnswers:
            break
        elif answer in helpAnswers:
            print "Possible responses are:"
            print validAnswers
            print "(case is insignificant)."
            answer = ""
        else:
            answer = string.lower(raw_input(qprompt + " (h for help): "))

    return answer


r = "kill -HUP `ps cax|grep inetd|awk '{print $1}'`"  # restarts the daemon
n = "Inetd not restarted"
prompt = "Do you want to restart the INETD daemon?"
answer = getYNanswer(r, n, prompt)
print "The answer was", answer

--->8--- tested with 1.5.2 and 2.0 ---

or maybe even... class YNAnswer, used like:

	inetd = YNAnswer(y_reply, n_reply, prompt)
	# ...
	if inetd.answer == None:
	    pass  # answer in exitAnswers
	elif inetd: 
	    pass  # answer in yesAnswers
	else
	    pass  # answer in noAnswers


Have fun,

	Bruce