[Tutor] Why can't I make this function work?

[Alan Gauld]

> def Get_int():
>     "Function to collect an integer from the user"
>     type_check = 0
>     while type_check == 0:
>         int = raw_input()
>         if type(int) != type(1):
>             print "Invalid input"
> else:
>     type_check = 1
>     return int

Its usually a bad idea to use a Python builtin name as a variable.
int is the function for converting to an integer. Thisis particularly
unfortunate here because you need it to convert your raw_input string
to an integer! - Thats why the type test keeps failing....

However a more Pythonic way to do this is probably via an
exception:

def getInt():
   while True:
      try: num = int(raw_input())
      except TypeError: continue
      return num

That will of course work for floats (which will be converted to ints,
so it might not be exactly what you want. But a simple test before the
conversion would fix that.

def getInt():
   while True:
      try:
         num = raw_input()
         if '.' in num: continue
         else num = int(num)
      except TypeError: continue
      return num

HTH,

Alan G.