Question

I’m working on learning python, here is a simple program, I wrote:

def guesser(var, num1,possible):
    if var == 'n':
        cutoff = len(possible)/2
        possible = possible[0:cutoff]
        cutoff = possible[len(possible)/2]
        #print possible

        if (len(possible) == 1):
             print "Your Number is:", possible
        else:
            var = raw_input("Is Your Number Bigger Than %s? (y/n): " %cutoff)
            guesser(var, cutoff,possible)


    elif var == 'y':
        cutoff = len(possible)/2
        possible = possible[cutoff:len(possible)]
        cutoff = possible[len(possible)/2]
        #print possible
        #print cutoff

       if (len(possible) == 1):
           print "Your Number is:", possible
       else:
            var = raw_input("Is Your Number Bigger Than %s? (y/n): " %cutoff)
            guesser(var, cutoff,possible)


    else:
        var = raw_input("Is Your Number Bigger Than 50? (y/n): ")
        guesser(var, 50, possible)

possible = []
possible = range(1,101)

guesser('a', 50, possible)

Answer 1

Before doing it more pythonic I will probably make it more simple… the algorithm is much more complex than necessary. No need to use a list when two ints are enough.

def guesser(low = 0, up = 100):
    print("Choose a number between %d and %d" % (low, up-1))
    while low < up - 1:
        mid = (low+up)//2
        yn = raw_input("Is Your Number Smaller Than %s? (y/n): " % mid)
        if yn not in ['y', 'n']: continue
        low, up =  (low, mid) if yn == 'y' else (mid, up)
    print "Your Number is:", low


guesser()