School Project, Need Help Fast!

[Mike C. Fletcher]

Others have pointed out the need to use quotes around the names and to 
use raw_input to get a string, and the desirability of not using huge 
if/elif statements, but this is a small note about making it easier on 
your users.

Instead of requiring that they capitalize the name, do the work 
yourself, it's trivial to implement and avoids a lot of annoying 
situations where the user types a name in and gets it wrong merely by 
forgetting to capitalize:

    mineral = raw_input( "Mineral: " )
    mineral = mineral.lower()
    # now compare against all-lowercase versions of mineral

Also, consider giving your users information about what minerals are 
available (so they don't have to guess), maybe even letting them choose 
them from a list that you display (to avoid problems with spelling, I'm 
sure *I* would mis-spell Chalcopyrite, for instance).

Oh, and one last idea, this one for making this easier on yourself:

    minerals = {}
    for line in open( 'mineraltable.csv' ):
        name, information = line.split( '\t', 1)
        minerals[ name ] = (name, information)

that is, don't store your mineral information in your program, store it 
in another file and read it in programmatically.  This is a good general 
practice, so no reason not to learn it sooner rather than later.  The 
above code, of course, will only work if you have a single line of text 
for each mineral.  I'll let you figure out how to make it work for more 
than that.

And finally, regarding the project itself, you may find that it's viewed 
as being more creative if you make it a simple game... you'll also 
likely find it easier if you ask for help earlier, and thus without the 
urgency ;) .  Oh, and again, as noted by someone else, asking on the 
tutors list is a good idea.

Good luck,
Mike


Gavin Bauer wrote:

> Please respond ASAP, the project is due soon.
>  
> In science, we are doing a "creative mini project" about minerals. 
> People can write a song, or make a movie, etc. etc. Being the dry, 
> uncreative person I am, I chose to use my limited python knowledge to 
> create a "Mineral Program" the idea is that a person inputs a mineral 
> name, and then the program gives them all the information about the 
> mineral. At first I figured this would be easy. I would make an input 
> line for mineral. Then I would use and if statement, and a whole bunch 
> of elif statements, to give the info, here is the broken program I 
> came up with:
>  

...

________________________________________________
  Mike C. Fletcher
  Designer, VR Plumber, Coder
  http://www.vrplumber.com
  http://blog.vrplumber.com