[Tutor] (no subject)

[Alan Gauld]

> ## Now the fun part ##
> ## We define a dictionary options that stores the strings that the
user
> would input as keys. The values
> ## are the functions that we just defined
>
> options = {"3":altexit,        # Notice no parenthesis--we don't
want to
> call the functions when putting them in the dicionary!
>                  "2":instruct,
>                  "1":game,
>                  "":choice}
>
> while 1:
>     play = raw_input("What is your choice? ")
>     if play in options.keys():
>         options[play]()
>     else:
>         print "\nYou need to pick 1, 2 or 3 or hit enter to see
choices\n"

Or more pythonically:

while 1:
   play = raw_input(...
   try: options[play]()
   except KeyError: print "\nYou need...."

Avoids the search of keys each time, and follows the idiom
of "its better to ask forgiveness"

Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web tutor
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld