In the Absence of a GoTo Statement: Newbie needs menu-launcher to choose amongst sub-programs

[Alex Martelli]

"Ron Stephens" <rdsteph at earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3AD6161F.16F5AC19 at earthlink.net...
    [snip]
> Thanks Alex!!!

You're welcone.

> I also am looking right now at your Python cookbook web site...wow this
> is a really great resource, thanks to you from me and from all
> Python learners and users future and present!!!

It IS great, I agree, but it's not mine -- it's ActiveState's, it's the
Python
community's, it's David Ascher's; I'm just one of many contributors, so,
direct these thanks to those who most deserve them!-)


> I guess in the case of the while loop above,  I could nest the while loop
in a
> one bigger while loop that ask "do you want to run another program option
> quit?"  Or, alternatively, and perhaps better, I could imbed a statement
> asking that question after the else code, immediately before the "break"
> statement, asking the same question. That would be better, I think...

I would let the user enter a 0 to indicate he or she wants to quit.  Maybe
something like:

while 1:
    print '0. quit'
    for i in range(num_programs):
        print '%d. %s' % (i, functions[i].__name__)
    input_string = raw_input(prompt)
    try:
        input_code = int(input_string)
    except:
        print "Please enter a number"
    else:
        if 1<=input_code<=num_programs:
            function = functions[input_code-1] + '.py'
            function()
            break
        elif input_code == 0:
            break
        else:
            print "Please, a number between 0 and", num_programs


where we also have a sub-loop reminding the user of available
choices, and a little error-diagnosis.  These issues have little
to do with absence or presence of 'goto', but they do matter:-).


Alex