I have tried and errored a reasonable amount of times

[Steven D'Aprano]

For future reference, here is a hint as to how to debug problems like this,
and a cleaner way to write the code.

Seymore4Head wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 13:48:09 -0500, Tim Chase
>  <python.list at tim.thechases.com> wrote: 
>>>     if e[0].isupper == False:
>>>         print ("False")
>>>     if e[0].isupper == True:
>>>         print ("True")
[...]
>>There's a difference between e[0].isupper which refers to the method
>>itself, and e[0].isupper() which then calls that method.  Call the
>>method, and you should be good to go.
>
> That works.
> Thanks

We've all done it. I think that anyone who tells you they've never forgotten
the brackets on a zero-argument function call is probably lying :-) And the
worst thing is that you can stare and stare and stare at the code for a
week and not see what's wrong.

Here are two suggestions for debugging difficult problems like this:

- Take a break, and look at it with fresh eyes. E.g. work on something 
  else for an hour or three, or go and have lunch.

- Use print() to see the intermediate results:

    a = e[0].isupper
    print(e[0], a, a == False, a == True)

You expect to see something like:

    T True False True

but when you see:

    T <built-in method isupper of str object at 0xb7d44820> False False

at least you will know *what* is going on, even if you're unsure of *why*.



Now, here is a better way to write your code. Since isupper() returns True
or False, there is no need to compare to True or False to get a boolean
value. It's already a boolean value! So we can write:

    if not e[0].isupper():
        print("False")
    if e[0].isupper():
        print("True")


or better still:

    if e[0].isupper():
        print("initial letter is upper case")
    else:
        print("initial letter is lower case")


(More descriptive messages are better than cryptic messages.)


-- 
Steven