Asking a user for the capital city of Peru, South America

Can this Python code be written in a more Pythonic way?

'''
This scripts ask a user for the capital city of Peru, South America
'''

question = 'What is the capital city of Peru?'
answer = 'Lima'

# Ask question
print question

# Game continues as long as question is not answered
# Game ends after 3 failed attempts
end_game = False

# User has 2 attempts after entering the first wrong answer
attempts = 2

while end_game == False:
    # Get user answer
    user_answer = raw_input('Enter your answer: ').capitalize()

    # Validate users anser
    if user_answer == answer:
        print 'You got it right'
        end_game = True
    else:
        if attempts > 0:
            print 'Wrong! Try again. You have %d attempts left' %(attempts)
            attempts -= 1
        else:
            print 'You have no more attempts remaining'
            print 'The correct answer is %s' %(answer)
            print 'Oops!!! Game ended'
            end_game = True

It's kind of a limited code section, but let us go for a review ride:

• Have everything enclosed in main() – The pythonic way of starting any code within a module is to have a main method called from the following if statement: if __name__ == '__main__':

• Good naming of variables – You seem to name your variables good, that is in snake_case

• Not so good while loop condition – Two slight errors here, first of all if using something like a flag it would have been better to do while not end_game instead of comparing against false. Even better would be to use your end of game indicator namely that there are no more attempts left: while attempts > 0: (or possibly while attempts_left:

• Introducing elif – The combination of else: immediately followed by an if can often be better written as elif (which reads as else if something)

• Introducing the improved print() – In Python 3 the print is going to change into a function to make it everything a little more coherent, and whilst changing that, one could also get used to the format string syntax. Which changes print 'answer is %s' %(answer) into print('answer is {}'.format(answer))

• Make functions multipurpose – Often it is good to make a function multi-purpose, albeit still letting it have one primary concern. In your case this could be asking for capital cities

With all of these changes we got the code looking like:

'''
Ask user for what is the capital city of a given land
'''

import random

def ask_for_capital_city(land, capital_city, attempts_left = 3):
    """Ask for the capital city of a land with 3 attempts by default"""
    question = 'What is the capital city of {}?'.format(land)
    answer = capital_city

    # Ask question
    print(question)

    while attempts_left:
        # Get user answer
        user_answer = raw_input('Enter your answer: ').capitalize()

        # Validate users answer
        if user_answer == answer:
            print('You got it right')
            return True

        elif attempts_left:
            attempts_left -= 1
            print('Wrong! Try again. You have {} attempts left'.format(attempts_left))

        else:
            print('You have no more attempts remaining.')
            print('The correct answer is {}'.format(answer))
            print('Oops!!! Game ended')

    return False

def main():
    capital_cities = [
       ('Peru', 'Lima'),
       ('the UK', 'London'),
       ('the US', 'Washington DC'),
       ('Norway', 'Oslo'),
       ('Spain', 'Madrid'),
       ('Portugal', 'Lisbon'),
       ('Brazil', 'Brasilia'),
    ]

    # Your original code
    ask_for_capital_city('Peru', 'Lima')

    # Lets test for some more capital cities
    correct_answers = 0

    while ask_for_capital_city(*random.choice(capital_cities)):
        correct_answers += 1
        print('You got {} correct capital cities\n'.format(correct_answers))

    print('Goodbye!')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Do extend the list at will!

NB! When presenting code here at Code Review, the code is supposed to work, and in your case there was a little indentation fault. A good tip to avoid that is to paste the code into the edit box, mark the entire code text and then to hit Ctrl + K which indents the code properly.

StackExchange Code Review Q#107246, answer score: 8