On Tue, 06 Aug 2013 22:35:44 +0100, <eschneide...@comcast.net> wrote:

Why won't the 'goodbye' part of this code work right? it prints 'ok' no matter what is typed. Much thanks.

def thing():
    print('go again?')
    goagain=input()
    if goagain=='y' or 'yes':

This line doesn't do what you think it does :-) Typing that condition at an interactive prompt reveals something interesting:

goagain = "n"
goagain=="y"
False
goagain=="y" or "yes"
'yes'

Oho. What's actually happening is that you've mistaken the operator precedence. "==" has a higher precedence than "or", so your condition is equivalent to '(goagain=="y") or "yes"'. Since it's left-hand argument is False, "or" returns its right-hand argument, which has the value 'yes', which in a boolean context is "True".

What you seem to want to do is to have your condition be true if goagain is either "y" or "yes". Probably the easiest way of doing this and learning something new at the same time is to ask if goagain appears in a list (or rather a tuple) of strings:

    if goagain in ('y', 'yes'):
      print('ok')
    elif goagain not in ('y', 'yes'):
      print('goodbye')
      sys.exit()

or better,

    if goagain in ('y', 'yes', 'ohdeargodyes', 'you get the idea'):
      print('ok')
    else:
      print('goodbye')
      sys.exit()


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Rhodri James *-* Wildebeest Herder to the Masses
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