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Python Python Basics (2015) Shopping List App Continue

Canen McCaslin
Canen McCaslin
552 Points
Posted by Canen McCaslin
Canen McCaslin
552 Points

Bummer! Try again!

I have been stuck on this for 3 days but have been to embarrassed to ask for help but would greatly appreciate it. I've wrote the code in a dozen different ways but none seem to work. The instructions are as follows: 

Same idea as the last one. My loopy function needs to skip an item this time, though.
Loop through each item in items again. If the character at index 0 of the current item is 
the letter "a", continue to the next one. Otherwise, print out the current member.
Example: ["abc", "xyz"] will just print "xyz".
breaks.py 
def loopy(items):
    if item in items == "a"[0:0]
        continue
    else:
        print(items[0:0])

2 Answers

Jennifer Nordell
seal-mask
STAFF
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher
Jennifer Nordell
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher

Hi there! I see that you have thought about it and worked on it. It may be that at this point you've overthought it a bit. So let's take a walk through it:

def loopy(items):
    # Code goes here
    for item in items:  # for each individual item in the items list
        if item[0] == 'a':  # if the first letter of an item is equal to a
            continue          # go back to the top without doing anything and get the next item
        print(item)  # print the item if the first letter was not "a"

So we start by setting up our for loop which is going to go through every item in our list. Our list contains a series of strings. Just like a list, we can get the character of a string by using index subscripting. The first letter will be at index 0. We ask if the item has a first letter of "a". If it does, we don't do anything else but return up to the top of the loop and get the next item. However, if the first letter was not "a" then the continue will not be executed and it will proceed onwards to print the item before going to the next one.

Hope this helps! :sparkles:

Canen McCaslin
Canen McCaslin
552 Points
Canen McCaslin
Canen McCaslin
552 Points

You helped me understand for loops and if conditions a byte better today. Thank you!

David Evans
David Evans
10,490 Points
David Evans
David Evans
10,490 Points

Hi Canen,

First you need to loop through the items. You do this with a for loop:

for item in items:

instead of 

if item in items == "a"[0:0]

Inside the loop you'll do your conditional check. Checking if the first character of the current item is 'a' or not'.

if item[0] == "a":

If it is you skip it, if not you print out the current item.

This is the full code I got:

def loopy(items):
    for item in items:
        if item[0] == "a":
            continue
        else:
            print(item)

Hope this helps!

Edit Looks like Jennifer beat me to it!