raw_input()
function is used to read a string from standard input such as keyboard. This way a programmer is able to include user inserted data into a program. Let's start with a simple example using python script to ask for an user name. print "What is your name?" name = raw_input() print "Hello %s!" % nameFirst, we print string
What is your name?
telling the user what we expect him to input. Next, using the raw_input()
function the standard input is assigned to a variable name
. Lastly, we print the value of variable name
to standard output. $ python input.py What is your name? Monty Python Hello Monty Python!Depending on your needs the above python
raw_input()
example program can be also abbreviated to a single line while including additional new line character \n
: print "Hello %s!" % raw_input("What is your name?\n")It is important to point out that python function
raw_input()
will produce string and thus its output cannot be treated as an integer. Therefore, when using python's raw_input()
function to obtain an integer as an user input, the obtained input string must be first converted to an integer before it can be used as an integer. Example:
print "What integer you wish to multiply by 2?" number = int(raw_input()) print "The answer is: %s" % (number * 2) # Alternative shortened version print "The answer is: %s" % (int(raw_input("What integer you wish to multiply by 3?\n")) * 3)Output:
$ python input.py What integer you wish to multiply by 2? 33 The answer is: 66 What integer you wish to multiply by 3? 33 The answer is: 99