I was wondering what functions should I use for this def function so that the user can only enter strings and not integers -
def GetTextFromUser():
TextFromUser = raw_input('Please enter the text to use: ')
return TextFromUser
2 Answers
raw_input() always returns a string. But ,if by string you meant only alphabets are allowed, then you can use: str.isalpha()
S.isalpha() -> bool
Return True if all characters in S are alphabetic
and there is at least one character in S, False otherwise.
examples:
In [9]: 'foo'.isalpha()
Out[9]: True
In [10]: 'foo23'.isalpha()
Out[10]: False
answered Mar 5, 2013 at 17:19
Ashwini Chaudhary
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5 Comments
Hut8
"strings and not integers" as specified includes '/' and '^`{}'
user1655562
Yeh sorry for the confusion thats what I meant this is part of an encryption program and of course it uses letters and of course encrypts them depending on the encryption method. But of course I don't want the user to be inputting numbers straight away. But thanks for that, it should work
John Y
If you're encrypting text, why can't that text include digits? You're saying that you'll encrypt 'foo' but not '123'? What about 'foo123'?
user1655562
But when would you encrypt a message saying that?
John Y
You don't want to encrypt dates, times, or addresses?
According to the documentation, raw_input always returns a string. If you never want it to return an integer, I would try to convert it to an integer using int() and catch an exception if it fails. If it doesn't fail, immediately after, return the value. This follows the Pythonic style of "it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission."
raw_inputalready returns a string, so there you go, validation done. Unless you mean that the user shouldn't be allowed to type in1234(which would make the function return'1234'), in which case you'll need to be more specific about what you mean.