[Tutor] IndexError and appending to lists [Was: Re: Need Helpon Assignment]

[Alan G]

> "for" loop as you suggest, the program won't enter the loop unless 
> "s" is initialized so that it's in "input". How do I do that?

for s in input:

means that s takes on each value in input.
input is your file. Thus s takes on the value of each line in
the input file. You don't need to initialise s before entering
the loop as you would with a while loop. Similarly you don't
need to test for the end of the file, 'for' does all that too.

Take a look at the 'Loops' topic and then the 'Handling Files' topic
in my tutorial for more info on this.

> Also, near the end of your remarks you say that the code at the 
> bottom of my program doesn't do anything. It does for me.

Lets take a look:

>>> print N
>>> for i in range(N):
>>>    T[i]        <-------- This does nothing
>>>    print T[i]

The line that simply has the value in it will not do anything.
It will not print out the value, you need to call print for that
to happen.

> put in those print statements to verify that the contents of those 
> variables are what I expected them to be. That's all that mess is 
> for.

The debug/test print statements are fine, I was only pointing out
that one line did nothing, not the entire block.

HTH,

Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web tutor
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld