Running same program in terminal with different output

Question

So I am an absolute beginner and working through Zed Shaw's Learn Python The Hard Way. For some reason today when I am running a program I am getting different outputs randomly. Below is a a portion of my code as well as some of the inconsistent input/output. I have tried this multiple times in a row and sometimes it the code works properly and calls the next function and sometimes it skips over the majority of it.

Here is my code that isn't running consistently ...

def bear_room():    
    print "There is a bear in here."
    print " The bear has a bunch of honey."
    print " The fat bear is in front of another door."
    print " How are you going to move the bear?"
    bear_moved = False 

    while True:
        next = raw_input(">")

        if next == "take honey":                        
            dead("The bear looks at you and slaps your face off.")
        elif next == "taunt bear" and not bear_moved:
            print "The bear has moved from the door. You can go through it now."
            bear_moved = True
        elif next == "taunt bear" and bear_moved:
            dead("The bear gets pissed off and chews your leg off.")
        elif next == "open door" and bear_moved:
            gold_room()
        else: 
            print " I have no idea what that means."

Here is some of the inconsistent output... Here I run the program and use the input "left" at the prompt.

Theresa-Beckers-MacBook-Pro:Summer 2013 Python leafgirl12$ python ex35.py   
You are in a dark room.  
There is a door to your right and left  
Which one do you take?  
>left  
You stumble around the room until you starve. Good job!

Here I do the same thing immediately after and this time it runs through but the output is different.

 Theresa-Beckers-MacBook-Pro:Summer 2013 Python leafgirl12$ python ex35.py   
 You are in a dark room.  
 There is a door to your right and left  
 Which one do you take?  
 >left  
 There is a bear in here.  
 The bear has a bunch of honey.  
 The fat bear is in front of another door.  
 How are you going to move the bear?

I know in C++ when creating new variables it can be a matter of stack vs heap, but I con't find any answers for Python functions on the same computer. I have also retyped my code in case there is some indentation error that I am not seeing. A few times I have been able to get the correct output when I continue and type "take honey" but this only works half the time and "taunt bear" has yet to work at all. It just passes straight through to the else. Any thoughts? Does this makes sense?

You've posted the wrong code here. It's not the bear_room code that isn't running consistently; it's the start code that isn't running consistently. — abarnert
– abarnert, Commented May 29, 2013 at 19:26
when you typed "left" did you accidentally put white space before or after it? — cmd
– cmd, Commented May 29, 2013 at 19:26
The best way to debug this problem is to add something like print 'You said "{!r}"'.format(next) after each raw_input() statement, so you can see exactly what you typed. — abarnert
– abarnert, Commented May 29, 2013 at 19:27
Also, I noticed (from editing your question to fix the missing code-indent) that you're using a mix of tabs and spaces. Never, ever do that. That can cause the computer to read the indentation differently from you, which means you may end up with mysterious SyntaxErrors and IndentationErrors—or, worse, code that runs, but with crazy control flow that makes no sense. The best thing to do is to always use spaces. Almost any editor smarter than Notepad can be configured to turn the tab key into spaces automatically, so do that. — abarnert
– abarnert, Commented May 29, 2013 at 19:29
Meanwhile, there's no "stack vs. heap" issue in Python. Everything is on the heap, but gets cleaned up automatically. So, x = 3 is sort of like auto x = shared_ptr<int>(new int(3));. (But only sort of… that 3 literal was itself a reference to a heap object, and x probably ends up as another reference to the same object.) — abarnert
– abarnert, Commented May 29, 2013 at 19:33

Andrew Clark · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-29 19:22:34Z

1

From looking at the code for this exercise, you must have misspelled "left" on one of the attempts, note that this could have been something as small as unnecessary capitalization or an accidental space at the beginning or end.

Here is the code in question:

def start():
    print "You are in a dark room."
    print "There is a door to your right and left."
    print "Which one do you take?"

    next = raw_input("> ")

    if next == "left":
        bear_room()
    elif next == "right":
        cthulhu_room()
    else:
        dead("You stumble around the room until you starve.")

If you type in "left" exactly and press enter, you should always enter the bear room.

answered May 29, 2013 at 19:22

Andrew Clark

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2 Comments

abarnert Over a year ago

… or, maybe she misspelled "left" when copying the code by hand into her program. She's shown us transcripts where she clearly did type "left" unless there are some non-printable characters there, but she hasn't shown us the code with that string in it.

tjustbecause Over a year ago

wow. thanks so much for your answers. the joys of being a newbie and beating my head against a wall for far too long over a rookie mistake. trailing white space. :/ sheesh. thanks again!

butteredtoast · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-29 19:41:25Z

0

Trailing whitespace after "left" or "right" will starve you to death. :)

answered May 29, 2013 at 19:41

butteredtoast

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