Am I in the right ballpark?

Question

I think len() applies here, but I'm not completely sure if I need to indicate that the input value will be a string.  Any advice on what I'm doing wrong here?
```squared.py
def squared(num):
    try:
        num = int(input("What number would you like squared? "))
    except ValueError:
        return(len(num) * len(num))
    else:
        return(num * num)
```

Rich Zimmerman · Answer

You're close. You don't need to prompt, asking for the number you want to square since that value is being passed to the function as the parameter "num".
The purpose of the try/except block is to try and convert the 'num' to an int - which means "5" and 5.0 would convert to and int since they are actual numbers, where as if you passed "foo" as the parameter, when you try to convert it to an int, it would throw an error. 
The challenge then wants you to print the value of 'num' times the length of the value of 'num'... so
```Python
print("foo" * len("foo"))
would be
"foofoofoo" # foo * 3
```
Additionally, you don't need to use parenthesis in the return lines with python.
So you want your function to look something like this
Python
def squared(num):
    try:
        num = int(num)
    except ValueError:
        return num * len(num)
    else:
        return num * num

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Benjamin Guyton

Benjamin Guyton

Am I in the right ballpark?

1 Answer

Rich Zimmerman

Rich Zimmerman