[Tutor] Separating recursion, for loops, and while loops

[Guess Who? Me]

I started working on my dice program again, only this time I've decided to 
split it up - I want to eventually make three entirely separate ways to do 
the same thing (just for practice's sake) - one with a 'with' loop, one with 
a 'for' loop, and one with recursion. I have a question about the 
'referencing local variable total before assignment', and I'd like some 
input (ha ha - no pun intended) on what I've done so far, if there is 
anything I should be doing differently, etc. (The program isn't finished, 
only the first part of it works, and the second part of it gives me that 
strange referencing error, even when I put total=0 at the top...well anyway, 
here is the code).
################
#Dice Roll Program

import random

#Use for loops, while loops, and recursion, separately, to yield
#a dice program.


def loop_dice(rolls, sides):
    if rolls<1:
        print "If you don't play, you can't win or lose."
    elif sides<1:
        print "There are either 0 sides, or infinitely many sides. Trippy."
    while rolls > 0:
        value=random.randint(1,sides)
        rolls=rolls-1
        print value


def for_dice(rolls, sides):
    if rolls<1:
        print "If you don't play, you can't win or lose."
    elif sides <1:
        print "There are either 0 sides, or infinitely many sides. Trippy."
# I had a problem using rolls because it wasn't in a form that the
#for list could swallow, I think, so I made it use the output of the #range
#function.
    rolls=range(1,rolls)
    for elem in rolls:
        elem=random.randint(1,sides)
        value=elem
        total=value+total
        #'local variable total referenced before assignment'
        print total
    else:
        print "The end."



choice=input("Press 0 to try my (working) while loop code,"\
             "press 1 to use the for loop code:")

rolls=input("How many rolls would you like to make?")
sides=input("How many sides would you like to make?")

if choice == 0:
    print loop_dice(rolls,sides)
elif choice == 1:
    print for_dice(rolls,sides)
###################

And one more thing - the first part, loop_dice, outputs things on different 
lines - is there any way, without using recursion, to add all the numbers 
together before printing them?

And if I am using recursion, same question - can I output add the numbers 
together and output them? I'm sure I can, I just don't know how, and would 
appreciate the enlightenment.

Oh, and the 'for' statement wouldn't work when I would use the input 'rolls' 
as a number - was that just in my imagination? 
http://www.python.org/doc/current/ref/for.html says it can 'iterate over' 
the following: string, tuple or list. Why would you 'iterate' over a string 
- isn't a single string just one thing? Or does it mean that it can do 
operations on a string, and therefore can do operations on a string in a 
list? Why would you use the for statement for that? Also, what in the world 
is a tuple?

Well...I'm done. I hope the questions aren't too horrible.

Thank you for all of the previous help, (I think its starting to show a 
little! WOOHOO!)

~Travis



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