highscores list

[Chris]

On Dec 8, 8:32 pm, Shawn Minisall <trekker... at comcast.net> wrote:
> I'm writing a game that uses two functions to check and see if a file
> called highScoresList.txt exists in the main dir of the game program.
> If it doesn, it creates one.  That part is working fine.  The problem is
> arising when it goes to read in the high scores from the file when I
> play again.
>
> This is the error msg python is giving me
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>  File "<pyshell#0>", line 1, in <module>
>    main()
>  File "I:\PYTHON\PROJECT #3\PROJECT3.PYW", line 330, in main
>    if(hasHighScore(wins) == True):
>  File "I:\PYTHON\PROJECT #3\PROJECT3.PYW", line 175, in hasHighScore
>    scores[i],names[i] = string.split(line,"\t")
> ValueError: need more than 1 value to unpack
>
> Here's the relavant code:
>
> def hasHighScore(score):
>     #opens highScoresList.txt
>     infile = open("highScoresList.txt",'r')
>     scores = [0,0,0]
>     names = ["","",""]
>
>     #reads in scores from highScoresList.txt
>     i=0
>     for line in infile.readlines():
>         scores[i],names[i] = string.split(line,"\t")
>         names[i]=string.rstrip(names[i])
>         i += 1
>     infile.close()
>
>     #compares player's score with those in highScoresList.txt
>     i=0
>     for i in range(0,len(scores)):
>         if(score > int(scores[i])):
>             return True
>         else:
>             return False
>
> def setHighScores(score,name):
>     #opens highScoresList.txt
>     infile = open("highScoresList.txt",'r')
>     scores = [0,0,0]
>     names = ["","",""]
>
>     #reads in scores from highScoresList.txt
>     i=0
>     for line in infile.readlines():
>         scores[i],names[i] = string.split(line,"\t")
>         scores[i]=int(scores[i])
>         names[i]=string.rstrip(names[i])
>         i += 1
>     infile.close()
>
>     #shuffles thru the highScoresList.txt and inserts player's score if
> higher then those in file
>     i=len(scores)
>     while(score > scores[i-1] and i>0):
>         i -= 1
>
>     scores.insert(i,score)
>     names.insert(i,name)
>     scores.pop(len(scores)-1)
>     names.pop(len(names)-1)
>
>     #writes new highScoresList.txt
>     outfile = open("highScoresList.txt","w")
>
>     outfile.write ("     High Score                 Name             \n")
>     outfile.write ("-------------------------------------------------\n")
>
>     i=0
>     for i in range(0,len(scores)):
>         outfile.write("\t" + str(scores[i]) + "\t\t\t" + names[i] + "\n")
>     outfile.close()
>
> And here's the call to the functions at the end of my game, included in
> the error msg.
>
>     #adds player's score to high score list if high enough
>     if(hasHighScore(wins) == True):
>         setHighScores(wins,getName(wins))
>
> And this is what the text file looks like when it happens.
>
>      High Score                 Name
> -------------------------------------------------
>     15                              SHAWN
>     0
>     0
>
> The answer is probably simple, I've just been working on this program so
> long that my brain has turned to mush.  Any help would be much
> appreciated...thanks.

Your first two lines in your highscores file has no Tab Characters.
When reading the file you could do:

for (i, line) in file_input:
    if i < 2:
        continue

    # do normal file parsing


There are better ways to structure your code though, but that's for
you.