26 Apr 2012
School
Department
Course
Professor
Variables
Strings, Floats, Integers
print "*** Adding Program ***"
x = raw_input("Enter the 1st number to add:")
y = raw_input("Enter the 2nd number to add:")
sum = x + y
print "Sum:" + sum
•And the corresponding program output (user input in bold)
*** Adding Program ***
Enter the 1st number to add:2
Enter the 2nd number to add:3
Sum:23
Our program is telling us that 2 + 3 = 23
•When we added the variables x and y together with the + operator, they were not added
mathematically, but rather joined together
•The reason this happens is because what we get from the user via raw_input is stored as a
string and not as a number
•A string is a sequence of characters
•Characters are anything that you can type on a keyboard:
-Letters
-Digits
-Spaces
-Punctuation
•When you add two strings together with the + operator, the strings are attached together
•So, if we type two words into our calculator (e.g. "pot" and "ash"), then the result will be the
two words joined together (e.g. "potash")
*** Adding Program ***
Enter the 1st number to add:pot
Enter the 2nd number to add:ash
Sum:potash
•If we want Python to treat x and y as numbers, we will have to tell it to do this
•To treat x and y as numbers, we will have to convert them from strings to numbers
-That is, we have to change their data type
•All variables have a specific data type
•The data type of a variable lets Python know how to treat the variable
E.g. Adding two strings together will attach them together, whereas adding two numbers
together will mathematically add them
•String (str)
-Stores a sequence of characters
•Integer (int)
-Stores a whole number (no decimal point)
•Floating point (float)
-Stores a number with a decimal point
•Boolean (bool)
-Stores either True or False
•For the calculator, x and y are numbers, so we could store them in either integers or floats
Here's how to convert x and y to floats
x = float(raw_input("Enter the 1st number to add:"))
y = float(raw_input("Enter the 2nd number to add:"))
•Similarly, if we wanted to convert them to integers, we would do this:
x = int(raw_input("Enter the 1st number to add:"))
y = int(raw_input("Enter the 2nd number to add:"))
•Now, our full program looks like this:
print "*** Adding Program ***"
x = float(raw_input("Enter the 1st number to add:"))
y = float(raw_input("Enter the 2nd number to add:"))
sum = x + y
print "Sum:" + sum
•And the program output is now this:
*** Adding Program ***
Enter the 1st number to add:2
Enter the 2nd number to add:3
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "D:\Program Files\Python25\calculator.py",
line 5, in <module>
print "Sum:" + sum TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'float' objects
•Python cannot join a string and a float together; it can only join two strings together
•Here is the corrected code
print "*** Adding Program ***"
x = float(raw_input("Enter the 1st number to add:"))
y = float(raw_input("Enter the 2nd number to add:"))
sum = x + y
print "Sum:" + str(sum)
•The corresponding output:
*** Adding Program ***
Enter the 1st number to add:2
Enter the 2nd number to add:3
Sum:5.0
•Our corrected calculator could still produce a runtime error – for example, if the user types in
a word instead of a number
*** Adding Program ***
Enter the 1st number to add:2
Enter the 2nd number to add:bob