[Tutor] small program, but I'm very confused

[Kalle Svensson]

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[Melissa K. Surprenant]
> I have to write a small program for class, and I'm having a terrible
> time with it.  I wrote the program, and it seems to me like it should
> work, but it doesn't.  I'm sure there are more errors than this, but
> right now I get an error when I try to write to the file.  It says I
> have invalid syntax, with a carat point towards the file name for the
> following line:  f.write('\2\n')
> 
> I would appreciate any help anyone would care to offer.  Thank you!
> 
> Here is the code:
...
> for y in loginsList:
> re.findall(('^loginsList[y]:x:[0-9]{4}:[0-9]{2,3}:)([A-Za-z]\s[A-Za-z])(.*?)(/n)',
> '/etc/passwd')
>      f.write('\2\n')
...

The thing is that Python uses indentation to determine scope.  That
is, to see if some code should be executed inside or outside a for
loop, Python looks at how the code is indented.

def func1():
    print "Hello",

def func2():
    print "World!"

for x in range(3):
    func1()
func2()

will result in the output

Hello Hello Hello World!

This means that the indentation must be consistent,

for x in range(3):
    func1()
  func2()

is wrong.  Python can't determine if the call to func2 (which is
indented 2 spaces) should be inside (indented 4 spaces) or outside
(indented 0 spaces) the loop and instead of guessing raises a syntax
error to give you a chance to correct the code.

Peace,
  Kalle
- -- 
Kalle Svensson, http://www.juckapan.org/~kalle/
Student, root and saint in the Church of Emacs.
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