#lpthw

Today I am starting off with exercise 13. Exercise 13 introduces the concepts of variables, modules, and argv.

[ID: Exercise 13 code. It imports the argv module from sys, then uses argv to create 4 variables, script, first, second, and third. Next print() is used to print out the different variables /ID]

When calling the program I was confused as to why I got the error of too many variables. Looking into this I found that the first variable of 'argv' is always going to be the script. I then fixed that and added in script as the first variable.

Next for the study drill I wrote a new variable and updated the code to print the retrieved information.

Alrighty then - onto exercise 14. Exercise 14 is about practicing prompts and variables.

In the study drills I updated the script with a new prompt and print statement.

Exercise 15 is a simple program that prints out the contents of a file. An important thing to note is to always close the file when doing things like this!

Exercise 16 practices making a copy of a file and then updating it with 3 lines from user input.

I ended up running into the issue where it was saying that it couldn't read the file. I ended up finding out that .read() starts from the cursor position - and if the cursor is at the end of the file from writing it you will not have your file printed.

Exercise 17 is practicing copying files over and was relatively simple.

Today we warm up by completing Exercise 25. This is even more practice with functions and variables!

To run the program we call python in the terminal and import ex25 from there.

As I was working through calling the different functions in the terminal I realized that I missed a function - specifically the one that sorted a sentence. I called it and ended up getting a mess of individual letters. After bug hunting I found the issue to be that I called sort_words(sentence) instead of sort_words(words)

After fixing those issues I finished running through the function calls in the terminal and it went great!

Up next is Exercise 26! We are halfway through the book and it is time for a test. We are given broken code that we copy paste into a file. Our job is to fix it and get the program running! As I went through the program I left comments wherever I was fixing code. Below is my finished and fixed program.

And here is the output in the terminal:

Exercise 27 went over different booleans as well as a chart to memorize. The next practical was exercise 28 where you type in different statements then guess if they will be true or false. With my previous experience in programming I already knew a lot - the only thing that tripped me up was NOT OR booleans. Here's the output of the terminal!

Chugging right along to Exercise 29! ex29 introduced if statements. I already know lots about if statements from Javascript so this is more of a refresher than anything.

And then the output:

Exercise 30 introduces Else If statements.

And the output:

Exercise 31 combines everything that we've learned about If/Elif statements with the new concept of Nested statements. Using nested statements we are able to write a very simple Choose Your Own Adventure text game.

Here are a couple different runs I did with this program. My first try was not the best - I ended up having my mind turned into Jello!

My second run went better! I ran into a bear but I survived.

For the study drill it challenged me to write my own text game. I made a very simple one and got about halfway through where I want it to be.

I have to use a Windows 7 computer for a couple of months (I know, pity me, right?). I wanted to start using Python on it, and sure enough, Zed's sweet instructions worked just fine.

The hard part was Zed's step 5: "Run your Terminal program. It won't look like much." You are ALREADY IN THE TERMINAL PROGRAM when you open the PowerShell, which he already told you to do. Geez.

Next, I got a big fat error message after I typed python and pressed Enter. That is because Python is not installed. Zed has a link for that (in step 6.1). While installing, I carefully accepted all the defaults, changing NOTHING, because I know Windows is like that.

After installing Python 2.7 (oh yes -- I had to check whether my Windows computer was 64-bit or not. Open the Control Panel, click System, and look for "System type" there), I had to copy and paste the line Zed supplies in step 6.4. This sets the environment variable so the PowerShell can find Python.

Next, I had to exit and restart PowerShell. 

And then -- voilà! I typed python at the command prompt, and I was in Python! 

I was working my brain muscles tonight on LPTHW's exercise on Object Oriented Programming. Here's the exercise with only a tiny bit of tinkering on my part.

Tonight I did a bunch of poking around and reading about dicts or dictionaries (following along with LPTHW).

Dicts are handy storage containers which take multiple entries of a key and a value. Curly brackets tell Python that you're heading out of list territory and into the dictionary zone.

Today I brought in some aggressive mythical creatures into my code. 

I did one of Zed Shaw's excellent exercises from Learn Python the Hard Way. Exercise number 36 asks for a game navigating through a fun house.

My fun house has some very angry unicorns, so watch your back, kids:

https://gist.github.com/Telesca/7818146

I got to know how to use the "in" operator so that I could move the player to different parts of the game whether or not she used capitalization when entering commands.

def poker_room(): print "There are unicorns here, sitting around a table smoking and playing cards." print "Some have horns. Some do not." print "One without a horn approaches you." print "Do you suggest he is more horse than unicorn? (yes or no)" dialogue = raw_input(">") if "yes" in dialogue or "Yes" in dialogue: dead( "He still has his teeth, dude. You're dead meat.") exit(0) else: print "Smart move. He hands you a whiskey and asks you to sit down."

I learned the hard way (ahem) that "in" doesn't function the way "==" does. There's more flexibility because "in" just looks to see if the phrase was part of the entered text, where == wants an exact match.