My if statement won't work

Question

This is a snippet of my code, I'm trying to make a scrabble type game but for some reason this if statement isn't working. The file I'm opening is a list of 238,000 words, the English dictionary, and tempword is predefined by an input which is passed over to this function. So here I'm trying to have the tempword compared to every word in the file, but when it runs through it doesn't add to the tally even though I know that word is in the list. Any thoughts?

def checkvalidword(tempword):
    tally = 0
    file = open("words.txt")
    for x in file:
        if x == tempword:
            tally+=1
            print("Added to the tally")

Yes, there is only one word per line and the last line is a blank space — Ross Parker, Jan 12 '17 at 00:14

Vlad · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-12T00:16:11.260

1

Because you are reading lines from the file each line ends with '\n'

Try doing this instread.

def checkvalidword(tempword):
tally = 0
file = open("words.txt")
for x in file:
    if x.strip() == tempword:
        tally+=1
        print("Added to the tally")

Notice the x.strip()

edited Jan 12 '17 at 00:16

answered Jan 12 '17 at 00:14

Vlad

9,180
5
48
67

Do you think I should say x.strip('\n') – Ross Parker Jan 12 '17 at 00:15
You can, but by default it strips all types of whitespace from beginning and the end of the string. – Vlad Jan 12 '17 at 00:17
This worked, Thanks man! – Ross Parker Jan 12 '17 at 00:18
I have to wait 6 mins :\ – Ross Parker Jan 12 '17 at 00:19

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 12 '17 at 00:17

In order to compare the values, you should be using .strip() with if as:

if x.strip() == 'abc':

Because at the end of each line, there is a new line character \n present. You may verify it by printing the repr value of x as:

print repr(x)

You will see something like:

'abc\n'

It is even better to use file.readlines() as it splits the content of file based on \n. Hence you won't have to explicitly strip the new line character.

My if statement won't work

2 Answers2