[Tutor] Please critique my temperature_conversion.py (original) (raw)

Dick Moores rdm at rcblue.com
Mon Jul 12 15:05:26 CEST 2004

Thanks, tutors, for all the criticism! I've been up all night (Pacific Time) trying to incorporate all of your advice into my script. Variable names, print formatting, exception catching, an outer while loop, eliminating the need for importing from string. Learned a lot.

Exception handling is new to me, and I haven't succeeded here yet, as you can see. One problem is that if after one successful conversion, the user next enters something that creates an exception, this repeats the previous correct result and presents the prompt again. Presenting the prompt again is fine, but I don't want the previous result repeated. This doesn't happen if the user has yet to make a correct entry (such as 86F--getting "86F is 30C"). The exceptions I've tried to handle are: qwert, 2134qwer, asdf, zxc, (these 2 end in f or c), "", " ".

And how to provide a smooth exit from the program? I experimented with the exception that Ctrl+C raises, but doing this seems to make my computer go crazy. Available RAM goes to almost zero (from a usual 250-300 megabytes), and I have to reboot. (I'm using Windows XP.)

No command line execution yet.

And Kelvin? Later!

Dick Moores

"""

temperature_conversion.py

temperature conversion: Fahrenheit <---> Celsius. User enters temperature

as a number followed by a unit of either F or C. The program uses

the variable "number"

to hold this original number, and the variable "unit" to hold the

original F or the C. print """ temperature_conversion.py This program will convert Fahrenheit to Celsius or Celsius to Fahrenheit. Enter a number followed by F or C, such as 70F, 70 f, -12.47C, etc. To exit program, press Ctrl+C """

while True: unit = "" # the Fahrenheit "F" or the Celsius "C" converted_unit = "" temperature = "" while (unit != "F" and unit != "C"): temperature = raw_input("Enter temperature (70F, 70 F, -12.47C, etc.): ") temperature = temperature.strip() try: unit = (temperature[-1]).upper() except: IndexError break try: number = float(temperature[0:-1]) # get just the number part of temperature except: ValueError break try: number_to_convert = number # and save the original number except: NameError break

 if unit == "F":
     try:
         converted_number = 5/9. * (float(number_to_convert) - 32)
     except:
         NameError
         break
 else:
     try:
         converted_number = 9/5. * float(number_to_convert) + 32
     except:
         NameError
         break

 if unit == "F":
     converted_unit = "C"
 else:
     converted_unit = "F"
 print '%s %.2f%s is %.2f%s' % ((" " * 44), number, unit,

converted_number, converted_unit) """

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