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Python Python Basics (2015) Shopping List App Continue

Posted by Aaron Fornkohl
Aaron Fornkohl
3,188 Points

Cant get past code challenge

I can figure out what I am doing wrong. Can someone explain why this is not working?

Same idea as the last one. My loopy function needs to skip an item this time, though. Loop through every item in items. If the current item's index 0 is the letter "a", continue to the next one. Otherwise, print out every member of items.

def loopy(items):

for item in items:
  if item.index('a') == 0:
    continue
  else:
    print(item)

1 Answer

Seth Reece
Seth Reece
32,867 Points
Seth Reece
Seth Reece
32,867 Points

Hi Aaron,

You are close, to check the first letter in a string, the index is 0. Indexes are stated using square brackets. You want to use:

if item[0] == 'a':
    continue
Aaron Fornkohl
Aaron Fornkohl
3,188 Points

Ugh, THANKS!

Tyler Amend
Tyler Amend
2,236 Points

Seth I have a question. I know this is an old post, but I was having an issue with this too and your code helped me get past it. I'm confused as to why you're referencing item as index 0 when the list is considered "items"? It would make sense to me from VBA atleast that in order to test item in index 0 you'd test the list for [0] rather than testing the item itself with a position.

Seth Reece
Seth Reece
32,867 Points
Seth Reece
Seth Reece
32,867 Points

Hi Tyler,

Strings also have indexes in Python. This challenge is asking to loop through a list of strings and check the first letter (index 0) in each string and compare to "a".