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Python Introducing Lists Using Lists Continental

Posted by Stephani Dudrak
Stephani Dudrak
1,614 Points

Print continents starting with A

I don't understand why this isn't working. For each item in the list continents, if the 0th character is A, print the item.

Edit: the index needs to be in square brackets for some reason, but I don't understand why this works. It's not a list.

continents.py 
continents = [
    'Asia',
    'South America',
    'North America',
    'Africa',
    'Europe',
    'Antarctica',
    'Australia',
]
# Your code here
for item in continents: 
    if item(0) == "A":
        print("* " + item)

2 Answers

Pedro Cabral
Pedro Cabral
33,586 Points

You sort of answered the question already: "the index needs to be in square brackets".

At the moment you are using parenthesis instead of square brackets, hence the error.

Stephani Dudrak
Stephani Dudrak
1,614 Points

I figured that out, but I don't understand why it's the answer.

Pedro Cabral
Pedro Cabral
33,586 Points

A string is an iterable data type, you can traverse it, eg:

for character in 'foobar':
    print(character)

In most languages it's just an array (list) of characters "stringed" together and as such you can access it by index.