[Tutor] I'm puzzled

[Vincent Zee]

On Sunday, 22 January 2006 at 15:54:06 -0800, Danny Yoo wrote:
> 
> > Why will this little program crash when you enter the enter key?
> 
> [program cut]
> 
> Hi Vincent,
> 
> What do you mean by "crash"?  Do you get an error message?  If so, can you
> show us?
> 
> 
> It will also help to think to try playing the situation out without
> preconceptions.  In the beginning of the loop, at:
> 
> >     a = raw_input('number? ')
> 
> what does 'a' contain when you hit enter?
> 
> 

Hi Danny,

the program works with any input except when you just hit the enter key.


vincent at zenzeebook:~/Desktop% python untitled.py 
number? 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "untitled.py", line 12, in ?
    elif a[0] == '-' and a[1:].isdigit():
IndexError: string index out of range


/\
Vincent