Question

I have been working on this python issue for a while. I am in an intro level class and I am soooo stuck. Right now I am getting no errors but the program is not printing the data (from names.txt) or prompting me to search. any help would be appreciated. -thanks!

def main():

    print("Last, \tFirst")
    print

    name_list = get_names()
    print_list(name_list)
    new_file(name_list)
    search_list(name_list)

def get_names():
    # open the data file
    infile = open('names.txt', 'r')

    # read all the lines from the file
    name_list = infile.read().split('\n')

    #close the input file
    infile.close()



    return(name_list)

#def print list
def print_list(name_list):
    #print the data
    for name in name_list:
        print (name)
    return(name)

#def new_file
def new_file(name_list):
    outfile = open('sorted_names.txt' ,'w')
    for item in name_list:
        outfile.write(item + '\n')

    outfile.close()

#def search_list
def search_list(name_list):
    again = 'Y'
    while again == 'Y':
        name = input("What name would you like to look for? :")
        try:
            name_index = name_list.index(name)
            print (name), (" was found in the list at index point: "), name_index

        except ValueError as err:
            print (name), (" was not found in the list.")

            print ("Would you like to search for another name?")
            again = input("Would you like to run the program again? [y/n]") == 'y'


# execute the main function
main()

Answer 1

Corrected version with minimum changes:

def main():

    print("Last, \tFirst")
    print

    name_list = get_names()
    print_list(name_list)
    new_file(name_list)
    search_list(name_list)

def get_names():
    # open the data file
    infile = open('names.txt', 'r')

    # read all the lines from the file
    name_list = infile.read().split('\n')

    #close the input file
    infile.close()

    #print data read into memory
    print(name_list)

    return(name_list)

#def print list
def print_list(name_list):
    #print the data
    for name in name_list:
        print (name)
    return(name)

#def new_file
def new_file(name_list):
    outfile = open('sorted_names.txt' ,'w')
    for item in name_list:
        outfile.write(item + '\n')

    outfile.close()

#def search_list
def search_list(name_list):
    again = 'Y'
    while again.upper()== 'Y':
        name = raw_input("What name would you like to look for? :")
        try:
            name_index = name_list.index(name)
            print (name), (" was found in the list at index point: "), name_index

        except ValueError as err:
            print (name), (" was not found in the list.")

            print ("Would you like to search for another name?")
            again = raw_input("Would you like to run the program again? [y/n]") == 'y'


# execute the main function
main()

What changed:

• in get_names, the name_list read was actually a string, not a list. To get the list of lines you need to split on the newlines (.split('\n')). After that you don’t need to remove the newlines from the names

• after get_names() returns, you need to store the list and pass to the other functions

• new_file used name_list, but didn’t receive it as argument

• the try/except block should be nested in the while block

Congrats, it seems to be working (: