Python: Unknown Invalid Syntax Error [duplicate]

Question

This question already has answers here:

I'm getting an IndentationError (or a TabError). How do I fix it? (5 answers)

Closed 2 years ago.

I'm stumped. I looked through my code a bunch of times and can't find out why I'm getting an invalid syntax for this bit of code. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

def nameReverse():
 name = str(input("Enter your full name: "))
 testName = name.split()
 if len(testName)>1:
 firstName=testName[0]
 lastName=testName[1]
 print (lastName,firstName)
def main():
 nameReverse()
main()

• farbiondriven: It seems you didn't intend 'nameReverse()' correctly.
• Kalariya_M: nameReverse() is not correct and also always show the error that you are getting :)
• Laur Ivan: The actual stack trace would be quite useful. This error is due to wrong indentation or mixing spaces and tabs.
• JarPaJack: @farbiondriven it's indented one tab in my shell, I don't know why it didn't copy over. Thanks for the reply!

Answer 1

If it is python 2.x you should use

name = str(raw_input("Enter your full name: "))

Full code:

def nameReverse():
 name = str(raw_input("Enter your full name: "))
 testName = name.split()
 if len(testName)>1:
 firstName=testName[0]
 lastName=testName[1]
 print (lastName,firstName)
def main():
 nameReverse()
main()

Answer 2

The only error I got was an indentation error. This is python, so indentation is critical. Your if statement was improperly indented. Here is what you want:

def nameReverse():
 name = str(input("Enter your full name: "))
 testName = name.split()
 if len(testName)>1:
 firstName=testName[0]
 lastName=testName[1]
 print (lastName,firstName)
def main():
 nameReverse()
main()

• JarPaJack: Thanks for the reply! I copied this code into Python and am still getting a syntax error at 'def main():'
• JarPaJack: SyntaxError: invalid syntax, the highlighted part is the 'def' before 'main'
• Steampunkery: So, you copied this code into a python file and ran it with python my_file.py and it didn't work?
• JarPaJack: I got it to work, thanks for the help! This is my first-semester coding so I'm still getting used to all of the rules and constants.
• Steampunkery: What was the problem?