Problem reassigning values to variables

[adrigreat14]

I am starting to learn python as my first programming language, but i ran into a problem while trying to make a function that calculated the missing variable in the simple equation v= u+at.

The problem is that i am incapable to change a variable's value from False to True during a for loop. I tried using the vars()[] function to convert string to an usable variable, but the change in the variable doesn't seem to register.

I appreciate any solutions to this problem or any type of help on any incorrect or inefficient use of code in my function.
(The commented part doesn't seem cause problems, but i posted it regardless in case there is something i overlooked.)

def F1(v,u,a,t):
    '''Enter 3 values using None for the missing one to calc using v=u+at'''
    vTrue=False
    uTrue=False
    aTrue=False
    tTrue=False
    numVars=0
    for i in ('v','u','a','t'):
        if type(vars()[i])== type(1) or type(vars()[i])==type(0.1):
            print('val correct')
            vars()[i+'True']=True
            numVars+=1
##        elif type(vars()[i])!= type(None):
##            print('Error, Wrong input type entered')
##            return 'Error'
##        print(vars()[i+'true'])
##    if numVars<3:
##        return None
##    elif numVars==4:
##        return(v,u,a,t)
##    if vtrue==False:
##        v=u+(a*t)
##        return(v,u,a,t)
##    if utrue==False:
##        u=v-(a*t)
##        return(v,u,a,t)
##    if atrue==False:
##        a=(v-u)/t
##        return(v,u,a,t)
##    if ttrue==False:
##        t=(v-u)/a
##        return(v,u,a,t)
##    else:
##        print('No answer found')
##        return('Error')

[snippsat]

Hmm that type-checking is from outer space.
You should not use vars() . vars() or locals(),globals() provides low level access to variables created by python.
Dont use python internal working in your code.

To check for integer or float here a couple of way.
Here you only get out of loop if input is a integer or float.

while True:
    try:
        number = float(input('Enter a number: '))
        print('val correct %s' % number)
        break
    except ValueError:
        print('Please only numbers,try again')

type() is not good to use,we can use isinstance() instead.

l = [1, 2.5, 'a']

for item in l:
      if isinstance(item, (int,float)):
          print('%s is a number' % item)
      else:
        print('%s is not number' % item)

"""Otuput-->
1 is a number
2.5 is a number
a is not number
"""

Type-checking in python is something that not so popular.

Need to know the type of an object? Let me make a brief argument: No, you don't.
Just use the object as if it was whatever you expect it to be, and handle any errors that result.

[Gribouillis]

Here is how you can find which variables are None

missing_list = [ i for (i, z) in enumerate((v, u, a, t)) if z is None ]

This returns a sublist of [0, 1, 2, 3] with the indexes of the variables equal to None.

[woooee]

Receive the variables as a tuple and then use each item as your variable.

def test_num_variables(*args):
    print "number of variables =", args, type(args), len(args)
    os = -1
    if None in args:
        os=args.index(None)
        print "finding None =", os, args[os]
    else:
        print "None was not found"
        return

    ## assumes that the check for numbers has already been done
    total = 0
    for idx in range(len(args)):
        if idx != os:
            total += args[idx]
    print "adding test =", total

test_num_variables(1, 3, 5, None)

[pyTony]

With Exceptions:

from __future__ import division, print_function
def solve(v=None, u=None, a=None, t=None):
    try:
        v = u + a*t
        print('v')
    except TypeError:
        try:
            u = v - a*t
            print('u')
        except TypeError:
            try:
                a = (v-u) / t
                print('a')
            except TypeError:
                print('t')
                t = (v-u) / a
                
    assert v == u + a*t
    return v, u, a, t


print(solve(4, 2, 2))
print(solve(u=3, a=3.5, t=2))

[Gribouillis]

A variation on woooee's idea

def F1(v, u, a, t):
    args = (v, u, a, t)
    if args.count(None) != 1:
        raise TypeError("Exactly one argument of F1() must be None")
    index = args.index(None)

[woooee]

For completeness, you can also use a dictionary

def F1(*args):
    if len(args) == 4:
        to_dict ={}
        to_dict["v"]=args[0]
        to_dict["u"]=args[1]
        to_dict["a"]=args[2]
        to_dict["t"]=args[3]

        for key in to_dict:
            print key, to_dict[key]     ## while testing
            if to_dict[key] == None:
                ## etc

[adrigreat14]

thanks for all the suggestions you gave me to improve my code. I am quite new to python and programming in general and appreciate any help i can get. Thank you all for your quick responses