Question

can anyone explain this code from the book "How to think like a computer scientist"? It's in chapter 16.3

Answer 1

def deal(self, hands, nCards=999):
nHands = len(hands)
for i in range(nCards):
if self.isEmpty(): break # break if out of cards
card = self.popCard() # take the top card
hand = hands[i % nHands] # whose turn is next?
hand.addCard(card) # add the card to the hand

Answer 2

i get everything except how the hand = hands[i%nHands] code works

Answer 3

hands being a list of players, the remainder of current index/number of hands is the index used to pull a hand from the list of players to play
two hands:
1%2 = 1
2%2 = 0
3%2 = 1
it just cycles through remainders until it empties the deck

hope that was remotely clear

Answer 4

so that's cycling between 1 and 0 which would deal two hands but what if there were 3 players?

Answer 5

and i just finished going through the example on chapter 16 and now im getting an error halfway through the game...

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#58>", line 1, in <module>
game.play(["Allen", "Joe", "Kobe"])
File "C:/Python27\cards.py", line 138, in play
matches = matches + self.playOneTurn(turn)
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'NoneType' and 'int'

anyone else get this?

Answer 6

o nvm on that whole modulus thing, that makes sense, but did you have any success at the very end on implementing the program?

Answer 7

yes, i'm on assignment 12 right now actually, I've had sucess on all the assignments thus far