User Input
This section covers the basics of how to collect user input, provides coding examples, and reveals some useful tips to help you out when programming.
Input Function
In Python, you can collect input from the user by using the input function. Although it is unnecessary, you always want to provide a message including what you want to collect from the user. The example below shows me collecting a user's name and printing it.
- Code
- Output
# Stores user input in a variable called name
name = input("Enter your first name: ")
# Prints the users name
print("Your name is:", name)
If our input is Jonathan, then our output would be:
Your name is: Jonathan
caution
Input collected from the user will always be a String!!
Working With Numbers
In engineering, it's pretty common to collect numbers from users; however, since the input is a string, we must cast it to an int or float (usually float) if we want to do math with it.
- Code
- Output
# Collects 2 numbers from a user and casts them to floats
num1 = float(input("Enter a number: "))
num2 = float(input("Enter a number: "))
# Prints the sum of num1 and num2
print("num1 + num2 = ", num1 + num2)
If our inputs are 12 and 343, then our output would be:
num1 + num2 = 355.0