Newbie, homework help, please.

[someone]

On Saturday, April 21, 2012 12:28:33 PM UTC-5, someone wrote:
> Ok, this is my dillema, not only am I new to this programming buisness, before the last few days, I did not even know what python was, and besides opening up the internet or word documents, that is most of what I know. Yet, I have a professor who should be on Psych medication for giving us 3 projects, 2 of which I have not listed here to do. I was able to do research over the last 3 days, and I have spent 3 days on this project, by borrowing others ideas on this project. Below, you will find my professors assignment (oh, and due in one week right before finals, so I am stressing out so much, cause I don't know why he is crazy enough to assign crap like this a week before finals when I have Calculus final,chem final, etc. I have figured out most of the assignment, and below, it will be posted after the teacher's post of the assignment. What I need help with, and I have tried relentlessly to find, is how to put freaking stars(asterisks) as border around a list without installing any other program to a portable python, of course, this is where my problem lies. Below, you will see what I have done, please, help!!!
> You are required to complete and submit the following programming projects in Python by the indicated deadline:
> 
> Standard Header Information project (5 pts):
> Write a program that will:
> 1) Ask the user for the following information:
> 	- name of file to be created for storing SHI
> 	- user’s name (as part of SHI)
> 	- user’s course and section (as part of SHI)
> 	- user’s semester and year (as part of SHI)
> 	- user’s assignment title (as part of SHI)
> 2) Write the above SHI data to a text (.txt) file with the name chosen by the user (above)
> 3) Close the file that the SHI data was written to
> 4) Open the file with the SHI data (again)
> 5) Read the data into different (from part 1) variable names
> 6) Display the SHI data read from the file in the interpreter with a border around the SHI data (include a buffer of 1 line/space between the border and SHI data). An example might look like:
> 
> 	***********************
> 	*                     *
> 	* First Name and Last *
> 	* ENGR 109-X          *
> 	* Fall 2999           *
> 	* Format Example      *
> 	*                     *
> 	***********************
> 
> 
> textfile=input('Hello, we are about to create a text file. An example would be: (sample.txt) without the parenthesis. What ever you do name it, it needs to end in (.txt). What would you like to name your textfile?')
> userinput=[input('What is your name?'),input('What is your Course Section and Course number?'),input('What is the Semester and year?'),input('What is the title of this class assignment?')]
> for item in userinput:
>     openfile=open(textfile,'w');openfile.writelines("%s\n" % item for item in userinput);openfile.close()
> x=textfile;indat=open(x,'r');SHI=indat.read()
> def border(Sullivan):
>     string=SHI
>     stringlength=len(string)
>     stringlength=stringlength("%s\n" % item for item in stringlength) + 2 * (3 + 3)
>     hBorder=stringlength//2*"* "+"*"[:stringlength%2]
>     spacer="*"+" "*(stringlength - 2)+"*"
>     fancyText="*  "+string+"  *"
>     return(hBorder,spacer,fancyText,hBorder)
> 
> textTuple = border(SHI)
> for lines in textTuple:
>     print (lines)

Thanks your Bart for trying, I don't understand how it works or if you tried to place my script in python to see if it would work, unfortunately, I tried 10 different ways plus yours, and I don't see the connection. Unless you were trying to help me see the way and I did not, sorry, but thanks for trying. The characters did show me a little more.