[Tutor] Getting confusing NameError

[Christian Witts]

On 18/08/2010 09:15, shane brennan wrote:
> Hi Tutors
> This is my first mail to this list so firstly thank you for reading 
> and apologies in advance for any noob mistakes i may have 
> inadvertantly made:). Ive only started learning python as my first 
> programming language and its all going well so far, working my way 
> through a couple of books one of which is programming python: for 
> absolute beginners by Michael Dawson
> In one of the code samples he supplies while doing loops ( namely if 
> and else loops) im getting a NameError i dont understand and cannot 
> find any help anywhere about it. here is the code he supplied and the 
> error im getting
> # Password
> # Demonstrates the if statement
> print("Welcome to System Security Inc.")
> print("-- where security is our middle name\n")
> password = input("Enter your password: ")
> if password == "secret":
>     print("Access Granted")
> input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.")
> and the traceback error im getting
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "G:\Programming\Python\programming 
> python\chapter3\password.py", line 7,
> in <module>
>     password = input("Enter your password: ")
>   File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
> NameError: name 'secret' is not defined
> I know this is probably very simple but for some reason i cannot get 
> my head around it.
> thank you for any help in advance
> shane
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tutor maillist  -  Tutor at python.org
> To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
>    

input() [1] expects a valid Python expression as input as it gets 
evaluated and is not technically safe.
raw_input() [2] is what you should be using instead.

[1] http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#input
[2] http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#raw_input

Hope that helps.  Welcome to the list and enjoy your stay.

-- 
Kind Regards,
Christian Witts