[Tutor] Breaking out of loop...

[Ken G.]

Alan Gauld wrote:
>
> "Ken G." <beachkid at insightbb.com> wrote
>
>> I am trying to break out of a loop posted below.  When asked for 
>> monthdate, it should break out if I entered the number zero and it 
>> does not.  GRRR.  Been working on this for almost an hour.
>>
>>    monthdate = 999
>>
>>    while monthdate <> 0:
>
> You are comparing monthdate with a number but raw_input returns a string.
>
> Also <> is deprecated, change it to !=
>
> Try
>
> while monthdate != "0":
>
> and it should work.
>
> Except....
>>        monthdate = raw_input('Enter the month and date in two digit 
>> format each: ')           month = monthdate[0:2]
>>        date = monthdate[2:4]
>>        year = ('2009')
>>        print month, date, year
>
> With this code you always process monthdate so if the user
> types zero it will fail.
>
> The idiomatic Python way to do this is:
>
> while True:   # loop "forever"
>        monthdate = raw_input('Enter the month and date in two digit 
> format each: ')
>        if monthdate == "0":
>               break    # exit the loop
>        month = monthdate[0:2]
>        date = monthdate[2:4]
>        year = ('2009')
>        print month, date, year
>
> That change means you can get rid of the initial assignment to 999 too.
>
> HTH,
>
Truly amazing!  Thanks.

Ken