Object oriented hangman game

Question

I'm a hobbist trying to become a professional software developer. I do have a lot interest in Data Science in general and my goal is to master Python before diging deeper into specific data science topics.

I created this game when I started studying object oriented programming. Thank you all in advance.

import os
import getpass
class Hangman:
 winner = False
 word = ''
 mask = ''
 mistakes = []
 def __init__(self, word):
 self.word = word
 self.mask = '_ ' * len(word)
 def make_move(self, letter):
 letter_match = self.word.find(letter)
 if letter_match >= 0:
 for i, w in enumerate(self.word):
 if w == letter:
 new_mask = list(self.mask)
 new_mask[i * 2] = letter
 self.mask = ''.join(new_mask)
 self.check_winner()
 else:
 self.mistakes.append(letter)
 print('Wrong!')
 def check_winner(self):
 if self.mask.find('_') < 0:
 self.show_board()
 print('You won!')
 self.winner = True
 return self.winner
 def check_looser(self):
 if len(self.mistakes) > 4:
 print('You loose! The word was %s' % self.word)
 quit()
 def show_board(self):
 os.system('cls')
 print(self.mask)
 print(self.mistakes)
 def play(self):
 while not self.winner:
 self.show_board()
 letter_input = input('Choose a letter: ').upper()
 self.make_move(letter_input)
 self.check_looser()
secret_input = getpass.getpass('Secret Word: ').upper()
game = Hangman(secret_input)
game.play()

• πάντα ῥεῖ: You should elaborate a bit more about your code, what decisions you made and why, to get better reviews.

Answer 1

It might be slightly cleaner and more performant to keep self.mask as a list, and just join it before printing:

# Basically what you had before, without the space
# Just "list multiplication" instead of "string multiplication"
self.mask = ['_'] * len(word)
. . .
if w == letter:
 mask[i] = letter
. . .
if '_' not in self.mask:
 self.show_board()
 print('You won!')
. . .
print(' '.join(self.mask))

Now there's less converting back and forth between strings and lists. This also saves you from needing to do i * 2. The spaces can just be added in using join before being printed, so you don't need to worry about them.

---

print(self.mistakes) currently prints out a normal list representation to the end user without any context. I'd probably prefix a message to that, and format it a bit before printing:

print(f"Already tried: {', '.join(self.mistakes)}")
# Already tried: R, Q

---

I'd probably get rid of self.winner and change how you're checking for winning. Notice what you're using it for: you assign it in check_winner, then return that same value that you just assigned, but never use the return value. I'd have check_winner just return the value, move the call to check_winner to after the call to make_move, and use the return value:

def check_winner(self):
 if '_' not in self.mask:
 self.show_board()
 print('You won!')
 return True
 return False
. . .
def play(self):
 won = False # Just track this locally instead
 while not won:
 self.show_board()
 letter_input = input('Choose a letter: ').upper()
 self.make_move(letter_input)
 won = self.check_winner() # And assign it here
 self.check_loser()

I'd also probably change check_loser (As a heads up, it's spelled "loser". "Looser" means that one thing is "less tight" than something else). I'd maybe have it return a bool saying whether or not the player lost, and just return from that function instead. As I noted in a previous review (at the bottom), quit can cause problems when testing code. Just returning from the main loop to allow control to pass back to the REPL is much cleaner.