🔒 Difficulty understanding how to go about school assignment

[upper flint]

@turbid walrus

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[upbeat flume]

Do you need help still

[left steeple]

!paste

[upper flint]

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[turbid walrus]

yes please, im not sure why my message got deleted

https://paste.pythondiscord.com/XYWQ

Im trying to create a script where I get an input about the number of books per genre, and the title of each book

but I cant figure out how to print each specific genre with its own titles

[wise sequoia]

You're storing all the titles in the same genrelist without recording what genre they belong to, so that information is immediately lost.

It would be cleaner to do something like make the keys of the dictionary the genre names.

[turbid walrus]

The assignment says to use the same nested list for each title, but it confuses me because it doesnt make sense

i thought about creating difference genres as keys, and then moving the titles to each corresponding list, but then what would be the point of the genreList?

[wise sequoia]

It indeed doesn't make much sense since the dictionary is effectively useless then.

What are the exact instructions?

[turbid walrus]

i can send them, hold on

sigh okay nevermind

bad link

[wise sequoia]

A screenshot would work too assuming the instructions aren't over multiple pages.

[turbid walrus]

thank you ill do that

these are the instructions and an example of what the output is meant to look like

[wise sequoia]

These instructions don't make much sense to me, I'll be honest.

[turbid walrus]

I was worried I was missing something

[wise sequoia]

It doesn't say what the purpose of inventory is for example, despite mandating its use.

[turbid walrus]

yeah, maybe I do need to go ahead and create separate keys for each genre?

[wise sequoia]

The "proper" way to tackle a problem like this would be to do something like make the dictionary keys the genre titles, and the value a new list.

[wise sequoia]

Yes

Well, that's how I'd do it.

I don't know what they want.

[turbid walrus]

okay thank you, I just wanted to make sure it wasnt just me that was confused

[wise sequoia]

"genreList will be reused for each genre" and the lack of explanation on what inventory is for are the confusing parts.

genreList being "reused" is a bit confusing.

I'm not sure what they mean by "reuse", since that kind of suggests the list is wiped between genres or something.

[turbid walrus]

i did make it so it got wiped before the next input, however that just made it so only the last stored list was printed

I also thought about adding it to genreList, and then adding it to each respective genre, but that seemed like an unnecessary extra step.

[wise sequoia]

I was actually going to suggest that, but then I couldn't think of what genreList would even be used for.

I feel like there's some context missing. The "Start by modifying" instruction suggests there was previous context.

[turbid walrus]

well there was a previous assignment I had, where I was supposed to ask the user for how many books were in each genre, and then printing the genres with books.

so for example if i put 1 for narrative, 4 for mystery, and 0 for fiction, it would only print narrative and mystery

[wise sequoia]

The other way this could be done is by making the genreList hold dictionaries that hold both pieces of infiormation:

genreList = [{title: 'Blah', genre: 'Some Genre'}, {title: 'Blah 2', genre: 'Some Other Genre'}]

But inventory would do a better job than that for most cases,

[turbid walrus]

So I have a question, does python support a dictionary in a list nested in another dictionary?

[wise sequoia]

You can nest structures infinitely (assuming infinite memory).

You can't have a list as a key to a dictionary, but they can be nested forever as values.

[turbid walrus]

so would I be able to put a dictionary in the genreList? and that would hold each genre? The name makes me think thats what it wants but I still dont understand what they want Inventory for

It confused me that they have me title it genreList and have it hold the titles

[wise sequoia]

In theory, yes. There's nothing preventing you from doing that. But ya, that doesn't explain what inventory is for.

You might want to ask for clarification. There's only so much we can do with poor instructions.

[turbid walrus]

Okay, if I cant figure it out by doing the dict list dict nesting structure then Ill ask for clarification

thank you

[wise sequoia]

You're welcome.

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