Troubleshooting Nested Print Statements in Python

Learn how to fix a common issue with nested print statements in Python while building a bot. Follow our step-by-step guide to debugging your code effectively.
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This video is based on the question stackoverflow.com/q/71775112/ asked by the user 'Tihudzy' ( stackoverflow.com/u/18730730/ ) and on the answer stackoverflow.com/a/71775132/ provided by the user 'KingsDev' ( stackoverflow.com/u/12964643/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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Troubleshooting Nested Print Statements in Python: A Beginner's Guide

As a beginner programmer, it's common to run into issues while writing your code. If you’ve started working with Python 3, you might encounter a problem with nested print statements, especially when building applications like a bot. In this guide, we’ll explore a specific example where a print statement isn't executing as expected and provide a thorough explanation of how to resolve it.

The Issue

Imagine you are creating a bot that interacts with users, asking questions and providing answers based on their responses. Here’s a snippet of your code that seems to be causing trouble:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

When you run this code, you get output like this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

You might notice that the final print statement, intended to suggest cutting the 2nd wire, doesn't execute as expected.

Understanding the Problem

Let's break down what's happening:

Logical Structure: In your current code, the check for whether the answer is "N" is nested inside the check for "Y". This means that if the answer is "Y", the program will pursue that path and will never check if the answer is "N".

Execution Flow: Since the checks are mutually exclusive (an answer can't be both "Y" and "N"), the condition for printing "cut the 2nd wire" will never be met.

Solution

To fix this issue, you simply need to adjust the indentation in your code. Here's how you can do it:

Move the condition for "N" outside the "Y" condition. Now your code will look like this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Key Changes:

Removed the nesting of if question1.upper() == "N": inside the "Y" condition.

Added a pass statement in the "Y" condition to indicate that no operations are needed at that step.

Conclusion

By ensuring your conditions are correctly structured and logically placed, you can troubleshoot and fix issues like the one you faced with nested print statements in Python. Remember to check for logical flow in your programs as it can often lead to such problems.

Happy coding! If you have more questions or face different challenges, feel free to reach out for help!