If…else statement issue with raw_input on Python

Question

I\'m currently following Zed Shaw\'s book on Python, Learn Python the Hard Way and I\'m learning about functions. I decided to follow some of the extra credit exercises that

Answer 1

In Python 2.x raw_input returns a string. Looking at your code, you could also use input which returns an integer. I would think that would be the most explicit option using Python2.

Then you can treat food as an int throughout your code by using %d instead of %s. When entering a non int your program would throw an exception.

Answer 2

The return value of raw_input is a string, but when you check the value of food, you are using an int. As it is, if food == 1 can never be True, so the flow always defaults to the plural form.

You have two options:

if int(food) == 1:

The above code will cast food to an integer type, but will raise an exception if the user does not type a number.

if food == '1':

The above code is checking for the string '1' rather than an integer (note the surrounding quotes).