[Tutor] What's the invalid syntax? [What's the error mesaage?]

[Nathan Pinno]

  I fixed this bug by myself, I had forgotten to add a print on a line by 
itself.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: "Danny Yoo" <dyoo at hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu>
  To: "Nathan Pinno" <falcon3166 at hotmail.com>
  Cc: <tutor at python.org>
  Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2005 12:29 AM
  Subject: Re: [Tutor] What's the invalid syntax? [What's the error 
mesaage?]


  >
  >
  > On Sat, 9 Jul 2005, Nathan Pinno wrote:
  >
  >> What's the invalid syntax?
  >>
  >> Here's the code (Part of my Guess the Numbers game):
  >>
  >>         if a0 == x0 and a1 == x1 and a2 == x2 and a3 == x3:
  >>             print "Congratulations! Way to go?"
  >>             answer = raw input("Play again: (Y)es or (N)o Type the 
letter of your choice. ")
  >
  >
  > Hi Nathan,
  >
  > Next time you ask this kind of question, show us the error message.
  > Brian has asked you before on other questions in the past; his
  > recommendation is a good one in general.
  >
  > Error message are not content-less, despite what you might think.  They
  > usually have some kind of useful information associated with them, and
  > they they really often provide key clues to what's broken.
  >
  >
  > Let's try an example to demonstrate this idea.  Let's say that we write 
a
  > program like this:
  >
  > ######
  > def test_syntax_error():
  >    print "hello world"
  >    goodbye world
  > ######
  >
  > When we run this, Python says that there's a problem here.  But it
  > actually says more than "it doesn't work"; it gets specific:
  >
  > ######
  >  File "<stdin>", line 3
  >    goodbye world
  >                ^
  > SyntaxError: invalid syntax
  > ######
  >
  > Python is saying: "Up to line 2 of the program, things look 
syntactically
  > ok.  I, the Python system, hit a problem on line three.  Here, I'll show
  > the line to you; maybe you'll see what's wrong immediately.  Look around
  > there for the syntax error.  If it helps here's more info: I got 
confused
  > as soon as I saw the word 'world'; I was not expecting that word there."
  >
  > Of course, if Python really did say something like that in full English,
  > it would be too verbose.  So it does take some practice in reading
  > something terse like an error message, and actually understanding what 
it
  > means.  But many of us on the tutor list have that experience.
  >
  > I hope this makes it clear: if you see an error message, include it!
  > It's actually really useful for us when we try to help you with 
problems.
  >
  >