help! simple question

[StarZ]

the topic is writing/reading text files, but i got this simple question. how do i make this program so it will look like this: http://i39.tinypic.com/5554wi.jpg i can't figure it out.

- to make it keep looping and asking "enter your name or break to exit" continue the question until the user enters break.

try my program and be apreciated is neone can help me fill in the missing code. ty

# Anna Huang
# Programming Assignment 16

blank=""
while not blank:
   y = open("pa16names.txt", "w")
   x = raw_input("Enter your name or break to exit:")
   y.writelines(x)
   y. close()  

   y = open ("pa16names.txt", "r")
   print "The names you've entered into the text file are:", y.read()
   y.close()

[sneekula]

Two things:

1) Separate the code that goes into the loop from code that does not loop by using proper indentations

2) Unless this is an exercise in writelines(), it is better to build a temporary string with the names entered in the loop, and then write that temporary string to the file after your break out of the loop. Otherwise you have to worry about appending a file, and if the file exists to start with an empty file.

Here is your code corrected to work properly:

# Anna Huang
# Programming Assignment 16

# start with empty temp string
temp = ""
while True:
    name = raw_input("Enter your name (just Enter to exit): ")
    if name:
        # build up the temp string and end the name with a space
        temp += name + ' '  # same as: temp = temp + name + ' '
    else:
        break

#print temp

fw = open("pa16names.txt", "w")
# write the temp string to file
fw.write(temp)
fw.close()

fr = open ("pa16names.txt", "r")
print "The names you've entered into the text file are:", fr.read()
fr.close()

Please read the comments so you can learn something at least.

[StarZ]

hey thanks, but do you know how I can make it so when the user types 'break' it will exit instead of enter to exit

[vegaseat]

It would be something like this ...

...
while True:
    name = raw_input("Enter your name (or break to exit): ")
    if name == 'break':
        break
    else:
        # build up the temp string and end the name with a space
        temp += name + ' '  # same as: temp = temp + name + ' '
...