[Tutor] Syntax Question

[Danny Yoo]

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 Orion72738 at cs.com wrote:

> I am very new to programming, and i am trying to make this program
> convert Fahrenheit to celsius and vice-versa. When I try to run it, I
> get syntax errors.

Hi Orion,



Hello!  Hmmm.... Can you show us the syntax error message?  From what
you've posted:

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------
> #convert.py
> #   A program to convert Fahrenheit temperatures to Celsius
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------
>
> def main():
>     Fahrenheit = input("What is the Fahrenheit Temperature?")
>     Celsius = (5.0 / 9.0) * Fahrenheit - 32
>     print "The Temperature is", Celsius, "degrees Celsius."
>
> main()


I actually can't see anything wrong with the code... except potentially
all those minus signs that you used to draw the comment lines! *grin*.

We want to avoid guessing the problem: do a cut-and-paste of the error
message, that SyntaxError, and we'll be able to better understand how to
solve the problem.  Here are a few examples of error messages:


###
>>> 3 + "5"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: unsupported operand types for +: 'int' and 'str'
>>>
>>>
>>> print "hello world
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    print "hello world
                     ^
SyntaxError: invalid token
>>>
>>>
>>> muhahaha
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
NameError: name 'muhahaha' is not defined
###


In each error report, the "traceback" and the error message are both
valuable debugging tools that we can use to put ourselves in Python's
shoes.


Talk to you later!