[Tutor] guess-my-number programme

[Wayne Werner]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 2:25 PM, ADRIAN KELLY <kellyadrian at hotmail.com>wrote:

> <snip>
>
can anyone explain the *tries* part of this programme to me i know its meant
> to count the number of guesses made by the user by adding 1 but i just cant
> figure out how it does this..........can someone explain??  i.e. tries = 1,
> tries +1 etc.... cant get my head around it...
>

The concept that's confusing you here is something called order of
evaluation, or evaluation strategy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaluation_strategy

The best way to understand these things is to try it out, and the
interactive interpreter is extremely handy.

I presume you understand the concept of assignment, correct? For example:

>>> tries = 1

Now tries contains 1:

>>> tries = 1
>>> tries
1

The variable 'tries' now contains the value 1 (In Python this is not
technically true, but it's useful to describe it that way).

>>> tries = 4

Now 'tries' contains 4. Of course, just like your standard algebra
variables, you can use your variables in python:

>>> tries * 4
16
>>> tries + tries
8
>>> tries / 1
4

when these expressions are /evaluated/ they produce the mathematical
expression you probably expect. But you can do more than just evaluate
expressions, you can store their results:

>>> lots_of_tries = tries * 100
>>> lots_of_tries
400

So what about the expression that confuses you?

>>> tries = tries + 1
>>> tries
5

Well, the first thing that happens when python sees the equals sign is that
the right hand side of the expression is evaluated, so python takes:

    tries = tries + 1

and turns it into

    tries = 4 + 1
    tries = 5

So each time your program sees 'tries = tries + 1' python evaluates the
right side first, then assigns its value to the variable on the left.

HTH,
Wayne
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