Python - text menu

Post your code here, please, to discuss what you did and what can be done.

Hi,

Thanks. I somehow managed to fix it by using a function. however, I got another issue now:

I'm trying to print a message and this is what I did:

def msg2(n):
    a = "You selected"
    if n == 1:
        return (a, "ITEM 1")
    if n == 2:
        return (a, "ITEM 2")

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and when I do

print msg2(1)

it prints:

('You selected', 'ITEM 1')

Why the ( and ' and , are being printed. I want the output to be:

You selected ITEM 1.

Thanks.

Thanks.

You are very welcome.

Thanks for the grade & the points.

Good luck & have a great day.

For the return (a, "ITEM 1").  When you put the two or more items to parenthesis, you form a tuple (object of one of the basic types [the tuple type]).  

When you pass any object to the print command, it calls its method that returns a string representation of the object.  The method should return "a human readable string" -- which is a value of the string if it is a string object.  If the object type is not of a string type, its .__str__() method returns some human readable string representation.  If there is no explicit definition of the method, the .__repr__() method is called.  It returns "a technical representation of the value of the object".  If possible, the technical representation of an object is the string that--if copy/pasted to the source code--causes creation of the object with the same value.  This is also the story behind your (a, "ITEM 1"). Because of that the print printed what it printed ;)

You can also try to generalize the menu -- see below:

a.py

def selectItemFrom(menu):
    '''Returns identification of the selected item.'''

    # Build the prompt.
    prompt = 'Please, type 1-' + str(len(menu)) + ': '

    # Display the menu once.
    print
    for n, txt in enumerate(menu):
        print '{0} - {1}'.format(n + 1, txt)  # zero-based to one-based
    print

    selected = 0
    while selected < 1 or selected > len(menu):

        # Ask the user and get his/her input.
        selected = raw_input(prompt)

        # Convert the typed-in string to the integer value.
        try:
            selected = int(selected)
        except:
            selected = 0

    return menu[selected - 1]   # one-based to zero-based


if __name__ == '__main__':

    print 'What do you prefer?'
    menu = ('milk', 'egg')     # Here a tuple but it can also be a list.
    answer = selectItemFrom(menu)
    print 'OK, you prefer', answer

    print '\nWhat type of pasta do you like?'
    answer = selectItemFrom(('spaghetti', 'spaghettini', 'macaroni', 'farfale'))
    print 'OK, you prefer', answer

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It prints on my console:

c:\tmp\___python\ezzadin>python a.py
What do you prefer?

1 - milk
2 - egg

Please, type 1-2: help
Please, type 1-2: xxx
Please, type 1-2: 5
Please, type 1-2: 2
OK, you prefer egg

What type of pasta do you like?

1 - spaghetti
2 - spaghettini
3 - macaroni
4 - farfale

Please, type 1-4: 0
Please, type 1-4: 5
Please, type 1-4: 3
OK, you prefer macaroni

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