Question about a weird bug with the ask function in a Python script

I built a simple Q&A bot last month that uses a basic ask function. It kept throwing a 'NoneType' error when someone typed nothing and just hit enter. I thought it was a quick fix, maybe ten minutes. I spent three hours checking the input line, the logic, even the way the terminal handled empty strings. Turns out I needed to add a strip() method and a while loop to catch blank replies. Has anyone else hit this with raw_input or input in Python 3?

3 comments

3 Comments

joseph_adams6616d ago

Ever think about how many bots fail because they don't plan for people just hitting enter?

reesemoore16d ago

But what if that's the real test? A good bot should handle blank input as a normal case. It just shows who built it with real users in mind.

blake32214d ago

That blank input trap is a classic. Honestly, it feels more like a basic oversight than a real user test. Just seems like something you fix once and forget about.