Unexpected exception with the python number game app?

Question

My code works if I remove the .format() in the except block. Not sure where I went wrong?

from random import randint

random_number = randint(1, 10)

guesses_remaining = 3


# noinspection PyGlobalUndefined
def game():

    global guess, guesses_remaining
    while True:

        try:
            guess = int(input("{} guesses remaining. Guess a number between 1 and 10: ".format(guesses_remaining)))
        except ValueError:
            print("{} is not a number.".format(guess))
        else:
            if guess == random_number:
                print("You got it! My number was {}".format(random_number))

                again = input("Would you like to play again? y/n ")
                if again.lower() == "y":
                    guesses_remaining = 3
                    continue
                elif again.lower() == "n":
                    break
            else:
                print("That's not it")
                guesses_remaining -= 1

                if guess > random_number:
                    print("Too high!")
                elif guess < random_number:
                    print("Too low!")

                if guesses_remaining < 1:
                    print("Sorry, you ran out of guesses.")
                    break
                continue
game()

Answer 1 · 2017-07-16T01:44:54Z

July 16, 2017 1:44am

Hi there! This is a tough question, but let's see if I can explain it. The biggest hint to what is going wrong is actually in the error you're receiving: NameError: name 'guess' is not defined.

Before you ever try to get the input from the user, the variable guess is undefined. It doesn't exist until the try block. And it's there that you try to convert it to an int and then assign it to guess. But if it fails to convert it to an int, then the assignment of a value to guess also fails. So when it hits the exception, the variable guess is undefined, which is why you can't format the string with it. But if we reorder your code just a tiny bit, it will work like I think you're expecting.

Note that I'm just showing the relevant part, but this is what I did:

    while True:
        guess = input("{} guesses remaining. Guess a number between 1 and 10: ".format(guesses_remaining)) #first get the input from the user and initialize guess
        try:
            guess = int(guess) #try to convert the guess to an integer
        except ValueError:
            print("{} is not a number.".format(guess)). #issue this error if it cannot be converted

Hope this helps!

Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Looking to learn something new?

Peyton Cook

Peyton Cook

Unexpected exception with the python number game app?

1 Answer

Jennifer Nordell

Jennifer Nordell

Peyton Cook

Peyton Cook