Hangman Game in Python-3

Question

answer = input("what's the word")
answer_list = list(answer) #list version of the original word
presentation = []
for i in range(len(answer_list)):
 presentation.append("_") #makes a list that shows the progress of the player during the game
incorrect = 0 #number of allowed guesses
completion = False # condition for end game
while completion == False:
 attempt = input('guess')
 ind = 0 #index of the guess that appears in answer_list
 count = 0 #number of occurences of the guess in answer_list
 for x in answer_list: #searches for all occurences of the guess in answer_list and change presentation accordingly
 if x == attempt:
 num = answer_list.index(attempt)
 presentation[num] = attempt
 answer_list[num] = 0 #if there is an occurence, replace that occurence with 0 in answer_list
 count += 1
 if count>0:
 print ("Your guess is correct, there was/were {} matches in the word".format(count))
 print(presentation)
 elif count == 0:
 incorrect += 1
 if incorrect == 5:
 print("You lost")
 break
 
 if any(answer_list) == False: #since all 0 have a negative truthy value, we can use any() to check if any element has a truthy value 
 print("Congrats, you got everything correct")
 completion = True
 break

I want to make clean up this hangman game and format it as 1 or 2 functions. How do I make it work? For example, initializing lists could be initialize() and from the declaration of incorrect to the end of the code can be play_hangman(). I am still very new to python.

• pacmaninbw: Welcome to the Code Review site where we review your working code and provide suggestions on how that working code can be improved. I agree that should should create functions, but we can't tell you how to do that. If you want a review of the current code we can do that. Please read our guidelines on what makes a good question and what we can can can't help you with.
• C. Harley: This code doesn't work. I run it, it asks me for the word, and fails immediately afterwards.
• Sᴀᴍ Onᴇᴌᴀ: @C.Harley Is there an error when it fails? If so, what is the error? I tried running it on onlinegdb.com and saw no failure as you described
• Sᴀᴍ Onᴇᴌᴀ: For anyone voting refactor requests as off-topic: please see answers to this relevant meta.
• C. Harley: The error was "NameError: name 'dog' is not defined" when I used the word dog. This is in both python 2.7.16 and 3.6.1 - I added 3.8.5 this morning, the code worked in that version.

Answer 1

Welcome to Code Review!

PEP-8

Since you're still new to python, it's a good idea to keep a window/tab open with PEP-8 loaded into it. It is mostly suggestions for coding style. Few things that can be picked up from the same:

• Comparisons to singletons like None should always be done with is or is not, never the equality operators.
• Comments should be complete sentences. The first word should be capitalized, unless it is an identifier that begins with a lower case letter (never alter the case of identifiers!).
• PEP 257 describes good docstring conventions. Note that most importantly, the """ that ends a multiline docstring should be on a line by itself:

Functions

As you've already raised this point, splitting the code into individual functions is always a good practice.

if __name__ block

Put the execution logic of your script inside the if __name__ == "__main__" block. Read more about the details on why on stack overflow.

f-string

Python 3.x also introduced literal string interpolation, or more commonly used term: f-string. Read more about it here (PEP-498).

Type hinting

When writing functions, you can also make use of type hinting to provide a more readable flow of your code to anyone. This helps removing the manual labour of having to backtrack variable types etc. More details can be found in PEP-484.

Game logic

The initialisation of presentation array can be simplified to:

presentation = ["_"] * len(answer)

For every guessed character from the user, you keep looping over the answer_list, irrespective of validating whether the guess is correct or not.

Before the loop over each character of the correct word, you have setup ind = 0 which is never really used.

Your global while loop relies on the condition completion == False (which should ideally be completion is False) but you break out before the loop/condition really has a chance to do so for you, making the variable useless.

---

Rewrite

from typing import List
MAX_ATTEMPTS: int = 5
def get_answer() -> str:
 return input("What's the word? ")
def correct_guess(char_count: int, guessed_word: List[str]):
 print(f"Your guess is correct, there was/were {char_count} matches in the word.")
 print(" ".join(guessed_word))
def game_win(guessed_word: List[str]) -> bool:
 return "_" in guessed_word
def game():
 answer = get_answer()
 correct_letters = set(answer)
 guessed_word = ["_"] * len(answer)
 incorrect = 0
 while True:
 if incorrect >= MAX_ATTEMPTS:
 print("You lost!")
 break
 attempt = input("Guess: ")
 if attempt not in correct_letters:
 incorrect += 1
 continue
 char_count = 0
 for index, char in enumerate(answer):
 if char == attempt:
 guessed_word[index] = char
 char_count += 1
 correct_guess(char_count, guessed_word)
 if game_win(guessed_word):
 print("Congrats, you got everything correct")
 break
if __name__ == "__main__":
 game()

• pacmaninbw: We aren't supposed to provide a code writing service.
• hjpotter92: @pacmaninbw I was just bored at work....