Guess the number game using jupyter notebook

Question

I made a number guessing game in Python 3 using jupyter notebook. I would appreciate it a lot if I could get some feedback on my code.

from random import randint
randnumb = randint(1,100)
guesses = 0
maxGuesses = 5

while guesses < maxGuesses:
    personInput = int(input('What is your guess? '))
    guesses = guesses + 1

    if personInput == randnumb:
        print()
        print('You won! It took you', guesses, 'guess(es)!')
        break

    if personInput > randnumb and guesses != maxGuesses:
        print('Guess lower', '(', maxGuesses - guesses,'guess(es) left)')
        print()

    if personInput < randnumb and guesses != maxGuesses:
        print('Guess higher', '(', maxGuesses - guesses,'guess(es) left)')
        print()

    if guesses == maxGuesses and personInput != randnumb:
        print()
        print('You lost! You ran out of your guesses!')
        print('The answer was', randnumb, '!')

Answer 1

Pretty clean looking code, but let's look at a few ways it could be better or more pythonic:

• Use elif statements:

  if personInput == randnumb:
      # ...
  elif personInput > randnumb:  # You already know they're != at this point
      # ...
  elif ...
  

• Use snake case for your variable names. E.g., use person_input instead of personInput (which is camel case), and rand_num instead of randnumb. In that second case, it's also more common to shorten "number" to "num" instead of "numb".

• Use format strings instead of print's argument concatenation, e.g.:

  print("Guess lower ({} guesses left)".format(max_guesses - guesses))
  

• Check for and handle errors:

  try:
      person_input = int(input("What is your guess? "))
  except ValueError:
      print("Not sure what you meant by that, please input an integer")
      continue
  

• I prefer to be more safe than sorry when handling my own incrementor, such as guesses, just in case I do something funky that lets it skip over max_guesses:

  # Since you "break" on correct answer, we don't need to check that again
  if guesses >= max_guesses:
      # ...
  

---

EDIT:

One more thing. In Python, to write a script (rather than a module), you should check if __name__ == '__main__': as follows:

from random import randint

def main():
    randnumb = randint(1,100)
    guesses = 0
    maxGuesses = 5

    while guesses < maxGuesses:
        # ...

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

This allows for safe code re-use, and makes sure that the code doesn't get run if this file gets imported from another file. It's not technically necessary for a one-file script like you're writing here, but it's a good practice to get into anyway.

Answer 2

Just a few notes:

• You should display the range from which the number has been chosen, and specify if the endpoint is included or not (i.e. can the number be 100?).
• 5 guesses aren't enough to find the number reliably, even with a perfect strategy (a binary search). Do you want your game to include a part of chance? If not, max_guesses should be 7 (math.ceil(math.log(100, 2)))

Answer 3

Well done.

• You could make it better by 'encapsulating' it into a function, so that you can use it or use a modified version of it in your other projects.

• Instead of checking 'maxGuesses' several times, you can make use of logical flags.

• personally I prefer using "for loops" if you know number of iterations.

• maybe you can improve it by asking the user if he wants to play again or not.

  from random import randint
  
  def GuessNumber(maxGuesses=5):
      randnumb = randint(1,100)
      # a logical flag to check whether user guessed the number or not - at the end of all guesses
      user_won = False
  
      for i in range(maxGuesses):
          personInput = int(input('What is your guess? '))
          if personInput == randnumb:
              print()
              print('You won! It took you {} guess(es).'.format(i+1))
              user_won = True    
              break
  
          elif personInput > randnumb:
              print('Guess lower, {} guess(es) left.'.format(maxGuesses-i-1))
              print()
  
          else:
              print('Guess higher, {} guess(es) left.'.format(maxGuesses-i-1))
              print()
  
      # if user did not guess the number in all guesses
      if not user_won:
              print()
              print('You lost! You ran out of your guesses!')
              print('The answer was', randnumb, '!')
  

=====

update: a way to play it several times:

Here is what we want to do:

• we want to make a function, that works with "any" game.

• that function asks the user if he want to play again or not:

______ if he wants to play again, then we run the game again.

______ if he does not want to play again, then end the program.

• we can "break" the problem to smaller problems,

  by making another function that asks the user if he wants to play again or not:

______ if he want, then that function returns True

______ if he does not want, then it returns False

• I encourage you to stop reading and try to do it yourself, and below is a code to do it.

=====

def playAgain():
    """returns True if user wants to play again, False otherwise."""
    while True:
        # ask user if he/she wants to play again
        play_again = input('Play again? <y/n>:')
        # if first character of user's answer is 'y', then return True.
        # strip: is used to remove empty spaces that could be in start or end of user's input
        # lower: is used to take the first character and make it in lowercase, for example
        # if user types 'Yes' or 'yes' both will be accepted, and return True
        if play_again.strip().lower()[0] == 'y':
            return True
        # if user types 'no' - either in lowercase or uppercase - return False
        elif play_again.strip().lower()[0] == 'n':
            return False
        # if user writes another word that does not start with 'y' nor 'n', ask him again - that's why its a loop
        else:
            print('Wrong input! Please enter "yes" or "no"!')



def playSeveralTimes(game_func):
    """takes game's function - without () - runs it as many times as user wants."""
    while True:
        # run the game
        game_func()
        # if user does not want to play again - break out of loop
        if not playAgain(): break


# run the game
playSeveralTimes(GuessNumber)