Error while comparing two strings in python

Question

def isWordGuessed(secretWord, lettersGuessed):
    '''
    secretWord: string, the word the user is guessing
    lettersGuessed: list, what letters have been guessed so far
    returns: boolean, True if all the letters of secretWord are in lettersGuessed;
      False otherwise
    '''
    score = 0
    tot = len(secretWord)
    for i in range(len(secretWord)):
       for j in range(len(lettersGuessed)):
           if (secretWord[i] == lettersGuessed[j]):
               score +=1
    if score == tot:
        return True 
    else:
         return False

For most of the words and guess letter m getting correct answer but while providing sceretWord as mangosteen and letter guessed as ['z', 'x', 'q', 'm', 'a', 'n', 'g', 'o', 's', 't', 'e', 'e', 'n'] I am getting wrong output.

Any suggestions, why?

Jon Clements · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-06 14:01:39Z

2

Looks like you could use:

set(secretWord).issubset(lettersGuessed)

to determine if guessed includes all of the letters in secret word.

answered Nov 6, 2013 at 14:01

Jon Clements

143k34 gold badges254 silver badges288 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

l4mpi Over a year ago

Was just typing the same thing, +1 to you :)

Huntkil Over a year ago

well this is way indeed but i was trying not to use any string commands to perform this task , thanks for help anyway

RemcoGerlich · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-06 14:06:50Z

0

My final answer should work with repeated characters, misguessed characters, etc. The key is that each character of the word should be removed from the list of guessed characters; if that fails, the character wasn't guessed (often enough) and we should return False.

def isWordGuessed(secretWord, lettersGuessed):
    guesses_left = list(lettersGuessed)
    for character in secretWord:
        try:
            guesses_left.remove(character)
        except ValueError:
            return False  # remove failed
    return True  # all characters succeeded

answered Nov 6, 2013 at 14:06

RemcoGerlich

31.4k6 gold badges66 silver badges83 bronze badges

1 Comment

Huntkil Over a year ago

i am new to coding in python so no clue about try and except , i guess it is used for exception anyways thanks :)

aIKid · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-06 14:29:37Z

0

Here is why:

There are two same character in mangosteen, e. Your code encountered it twice, so it adds two score. The total score of when secretWord[i] and lettersGuessed[j] is e, adds up to 4.

Here is a solution:

You can simply use the set to check if every unique letters is there or not:

return all([True if i in set(g) else False for i in set(w)])

This makes the function much shorter :)

Demo:

>>> g = ['z', 'x', 'q', 'm', 'a', 'n', 'g', 'o', 's', 't', 'e', 'e', 'n']
>>> w = 'mangosteen'
>>> score = 0
>>> all([i for i in set(w) if i in set(g)])    
True

An alternative is to break the inner loop straight after you found the wanted letter:

if secretWord[i] == lettersGuessed[j]
    score +=1
    break

Hope this helps!

edited Nov 6, 2013 at 14:29

answered Nov 6, 2013 at 13:47

aIKid

28.5k5 gold badges41 silver badges65 bronze badges

9 Comments

Huntkil Over a year ago

i thought so but checking the value of score every time reveled that is getting incremented for every value it is encountering , and i am out of reason as of why it is happening

aIKid Over a year ago

That's because the inner loop meet e twice for each e in the outer loop. Thus, the score is doubled.

Huntkil Over a year ago

thank alot mate it seems breaking the for loop after encountering the condition solves the problem

aIKid Over a year ago

That's very true! Once you meet the wanted char, you can just break the inner loop.

RemcoGerlich Over a year ago

But this also fails: if the word is "mangosteen" and the guess is "mmangosten", the score will be 10.

|

user4465894 · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-27 05:28:07Z

0

def isWordGuessed(secretWord, lettersGuessed):
lst = []
for e in lettersGuessed:
    if e in secretWord:
        lst.append(e)
if len(lst) == len(secretWord):
    return True
return False

I did this and it passed all cases.

answered Jan 27, 2015 at 5:28

user4465894

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Error while comparing two strings in python

4 Answers 4

2 Comments

1 Comment

9 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

4 Answers 4

2 Comments

1 Comment

9 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related