Question

No matter what I do, I can’t get this while loop to work; unless i hardcode the value in.

count = 0
value = raw_input('How many?')
print value
while (count <= value):
        print "a"
        count= count + 1

At first I tried using a command line argument, using sys.argv[1] for value but I got the same problem. This seems so simple, yet I cannot for the life of me figure out what I’m doing wrong.

Answer 1

Ensure that value is an integer,

while (count <= int(value)):
    count= count + 1

By default raw_input is a string, and for every integer n and every string s we have n<s is True (!), hence your loop (without the int) never breaks.

Note: In Python 3 comparing string and integers will give a TypeError: unorderable types: str() < int(), which is probably more “expected” behaviour.