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Python

Posted by Robert Richey
Robert Richey
Courses Plus Student 16,352 Points

Show: Python Quiz

After the planning stages for setting up the python quiz - from the Dates and Times course, I went ahead and finished it on my own. Here is a GitHub link to my Lumberjack Quiz. Feedback, criticism and praise are all welcome!

Once both files (quiz.py and questions.py) are downloaded, the quiz can run from the command line with python quiz.py from within the same directory.

This was a fun project; looking forward to extending the dungeon game as well. Thanks Kenneth Love

Cheers

1 Answer

David Clausen
David Clausen
11,403 Points
David Clausen
David Clausen
11,403 Points

Looks nice. My only suggestion...and its just a suggestion is the try/except should only focus on the possible error, you should move past the block once your try is successful...example:

 while True:
            #Get the input
            answer = input("[Q"+str(idx)+"] "+question.text)
            #Test the input
            try:
                answer = int(answer)
            #intercept non-intergers
            except:
                if answer.lower() == "q" or answer.lower == "quit":
                    sys.exit()
                print("Please only enter numbers for the answer.")
                print("Or enter Q or QUIT to quit program.\n")
                #Continue like break but just starts you at the loop again
                #instead of terminating the loop
                continue

            #Now we know answer is an int or the loop would have started over
            if answer == question.answer:
                self.answers.append(True)
                print("*** Correct! ***\n")
            else:
                self.answers.append(False)
                print("*** Incorrect ***\n")              
            break

The reason why is in this code negligible but you really only want to do what is absolutely necessary in the try/except cause everything in the "try" block will excute significantly slower as to ensure it catches an error before it executes it. If you really wanna get tight and slim on the try/except for your program then"

def isNumber(inputToCheck):
    try:
        return int(inputToCheck)
    except:
        return False

Great thing about Python is its dynamic, you can return anything, here the try and except are only used to get an answer so imagine your block now:

 while True:
            #Get the input
            answer = input("[Q"+str(idx)+"] "+question.text)
            #Use our new function to convert it
            answer = isNumber(answer)
            #if answer was unsuccessfully converted to int it will be False
            # 0 also equals false BTW
            if(answer  ==  False):
                if answer.lower() == "q" or answer.lower == "quit":
                    sys.exit()
                else:
                    print("Please only enter numbers for the answer.")
                    print("Or enter Q or QUIT to quit program.\n")
            #the answer was successful so we proceed with checking if incorrect or not 
            else:
                if answer == question.answer:
                    self.answers.append(True)
                    print("*** Correct! ***\n")
                else:
                    self.answers.append(False)
                    print("*** Incorrect ***\n")              
                break

Again this is only important to avoid writing too much code in a try: block.

Hope this helps! Either way i ran your program and it looks nice and readable!

EDIT: Also all code here was tested so it should work, i used Python 2.7 but everything is used works in 3.

David Clausen
David Clausen
11,403 Points
David Clausen
David Clausen
11,403 Points

Zero also equals False so my last examples has pitfalls if a question accept requires 0 as the anwser. But i wanted to make it straight forward. What I do for my isNumber function is take a page from Javascript and in my function:

def isNumber(inputToCheck):
    try:
        return int(inputToCheck)
    except:
        return "NaN"

I'd return NaN which mean Not A Number, and we can check that which when i check for it can't confuse zero and false

answer = isNumber(answer)
#if not a number will return "NaN"
if(answer  ==  "NaN"):

This way I can have a 0 for an answer without messing it up

Robert Richey
Robert Richey
Courses Plus Student 16,352 Points

Hi David,

Thank you so much for your time and effort into this reply. I understand and agree with trimming the try / catch down to the parts that can fail; I suppose I felt a bit rushed in my excitement to 'ship it'. I do really like your solution to implement a isNumber() function.

I'll take to heart what you've said. Thanks again, I really do appreciate the well thought-out response.

-Robert

David Clausen
David Clausen
11,403 Points
David Clausen
David Clausen
11,403 Points

Also i made a comment that i hope you saw to extend my isNumber for your game as their was a logic error in the function, i forgot python considers 0 == False, the comment modifies it to something you'll be familiar with and won't run into a problem if the answer to a question is 0.

Cheers! Can't wait to see what you come up with next!