First week of Introduction to Python Programming complete

The assignment submission familiarization week is over, and we get on to our first real project:

Rock, Paper, Scissors:

In our first mini-project, we will build a Python function rpsls(name) that takes as input the string name, which is one of "rock", "paper", "scissors", "lizard", or "Spock". The function then simulates playing a round of Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock by generating its own random choice from these alternatives and then determining the winner using a simple rule that we will next describe.

While Rock-paper-scissor-lizard-Spock has a set of ten rules that logically determine who wins a round of RPSLS, coding up these rules would require a large number (5x5=25) of if/elif/else clauses in your mini-project code. A simpler method for determining the winner is to assign each of the five choices a number:

• 0 — rock
• 1 — Spock
• 2 — paper
• 3 — lizard
• 4 — scissors

copywrite: Joe Warren, John Greiner, Stephen Wong, Scott Rixner, all rights reserved.