Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Python Python Basics (2015) Number Game App Squared

Ramon Berke
Ramon Berke
637 Points
Posted by Ramon Berke
Ramon Berke
637 Points

I am stuck in this task can somebody tell me my mistake?

The task says "You'll probably want to use try and except on this one. You might have to not use the else block, though. Write a function named squared that takes a single argument. If the argument can be converted into an integer, convert it and return the square of the number (num ** 2 or num * num). If the argument cannot be turned into an integer (maybe it's a string of non-numbers?), return the argument multiplied by its length.". I did this but the bummer says "can't multiply sequence by non-int of type 'str'". Can somebody tell me my mistake?

squared.py 
def squared(num):
    try:
        int(num)
    except ValueError:
        return num * len(num)
    else:
        return num * num
George Buckhold
George Buckhold
447 Points

def squared(item): try: int(item) except: return item * len(item) else: return int(item) ** 2

You can get the answers by searching the question on Google. Good luck!

1 Answer

Jakub Stanio
Jakub Stanio
6,378 Points
Jakub Stanio
Jakub Stanio
6,378 Points

Hi Ramon,

As written in the challenge, you don't have to use "else" statement. Simply do it in "try". For me, it seems that you forgot about "return" in the try statement. It should work with it then :)

try: return int(num) ** 2