Question

Question:
Assume that two variables, varA and varB, are assigned values, either numbers or strings.

Write a piece of Python code that prints out one of the following messages:

"string involved" if either varA or varB are strings

"bigger" if varA is larger than varB

"equal" if varA is equal to varB

"smaller" if varA is smaller than varB
Answer I tried:
if (type(varA) or type(varB))=='str':
print ("string involved")
else:
if varA>varB:
print("bigger")
if varA=varB:
print("equal")
if varA 13 years ago

Answer 1

The problems comes from this statement: if varA=varB:

You cannot use the = sign to compare variables, the = sign in Python (and any other languages) is used to assign values. Use == for comparison, and === for type-sensitive comparison.

Also, the statement if (type(varA) or type(varB))=='str': is wrong. The or operator is used for logic, so (type(varA) or type(varB)) will return True (because type(varA/B) will return either str or int) and the whole statement will return to False (because True != "str").

There are 2 ways to do this, one is:
if "str" in [type(varA), type(varB)]. This statement creates a temporary list and checks if either of them is a string. Another way to do this is:
if type(varA) == "str" or type(varB) == "str". This is the correct way of showing the logic, but less elegant in my opinion.

Answer 2

In addition, you are not using 'elif' in your code. You have an 'else:' followed by three 'if' statements. This is not correct. Review this portion in the notes. Lastly, in the equal to comparison you are using a single = sign. Go back and review this. A single equal sign is only used for assignment.

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

Also, you have omitted the parentheses in your conditional statements, you must have these. ex: if(a > b) .....

Answer 4

I got the above code to work making only 2 changes.
If varA=varB changed to If varA==varB <-- two == for equality
and == 'str' changed to ==type('') <--compares to type known to be string

Answer 5

BTW, the last part type('') just has two apostrophes in the brackets (empty string).