Number game - no numbers left for computer to select

Question

I'm working on the challenge after the number game task (do the reverse, where the computer tries to guess the number that a user has chosen). It's working fine, except if the user makes a mistake and it somehow ends up that there are no more numbers for the computer to choose from. For example:

computer guesses 31, user says "too high"
computer guesses 30, user says "too low"
the computer now has no more numbers to guess, and the program just stops. How can I print a message/have the program restart in this scenario?

def game():
# Get range from user and give instructions.
    print "First, think of a secret number between 1 and 10, 100, or 1,000."
    upper_limit = int(raw_input("Is the upper limit of your number 10, 100, or 1,000?\n"))
    lower_limit = 1
    print """
    Thank you! Now the computer will try to guess your secret number. After each guess, you will be prompted
    to tell it if the guess is 'too high', 'too low', or 'correct'. 
    """
    import random
    all_guesses = []
    while True:
        guess = random.randint(lower_limit, upper_limit)
        if not guess in all_guesses:
            all_guesses.append(guess)
            print "The computer's guess is: {}.".format(guess)
            feedback = raw_input("Enter 'too high', 'too low', or 'correct'\n")
            if feedback == 'too high':
                upper_limit = guess
            elif feedback == 'too low':
                lower_limit = guess
            elif feedback == 'correct':
                break
        else: 
            continue
game()
print "Game over. Thanks for playing!"

Answer 1 · 2017-02-22T21:20:01Z

February 22, 2017 9:20pm

You could test for that condition at the beginning of the loop:

        if lower_limit >= upper_limit - 1:
            print "It looks like you gave me some bad feedback!  I guess we should start over."
            break

If you want to start over instead of ending, you could replace break with game(). But then later when you really do want to end you'd need to replace the other break with exit()

Also, it looks like you're still using Python version 2. Time to upgrade?

Answer 2 · 2017-02-22T21:39:08Z

February 22, 2017 9:39pm

in your scenario the program enters an infinite loop because there are no more random integers between lower and upper that haven't already been chosen and appended to the list, so the loop runs, the conditional statement is false (number is already in the all guesses list), and so the continue statement at the bottom is hit, and on and on forever. you need to check that the difference between lower and upper isn't 1, and if so, break.

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Lauren Gainsbrook

Lauren Gainsbrook

Number game - no numbers left for computer to select

2 Answers

Steven Parker

Steven Parker

You could test for that condition at the beginning of the loop:

james south

james south