While loop being skipped

Question

I can't seem to get my while loop code to run inside my code. I bet it is very obvious but I cannot seem to find the answer for it. This program is supposed to let you choose how many numbers you want to have randomly chosen and the numbers it can be between. It seems that the while loop doesn't want to work. It skips the while loop and goes to the sleep(10). Thank you for the help!

import random
import time
from time import sleep
x = raw_input("Enter first number you want to be the minimum: ")
y = raw_input("Enter second number you want to be the maximum: ")
a = raw_input("Enter ammount of random numbers you want: ")
p = 1
while p >= a:
 print "Your number is " + str(int(random.randint(x - 1,y + 1)))
 p = p + 1
sleep(10)

• Blorgbeard: I think you meant while p <= a:
• Ashish: should not it have been while p<=a. since you are incrementing p inside the while loop
• jonrsharpe: Had you used for _ in range(a):, which doesn't require the counter, this problem would have been easier to spot.

Answer 1

raw_input returns a string. This means you are comparing a string to an integer for your while condition. A quick test shows integers are always "less than" strings.

>>> 10000 > '1'
False
>>> 10000 < '1'
True

Luckily, this behavior is changed in python3 where it throws a TypeError.

• user3594612: Thank you! I changed raw_input("Enter first number you want to be the minimum: ") to int(raw_input("Enter first number you want to be the minimum: "))
• ubomb: No problem - glad I could help. Would you mind accepting my answer if it helped you out?