Lesson 7: User input

So far, our programs have been very self-contained. They've never stopped to ask the user running them what he/she wants. It's about time we changed that. To do that, we'll be using the input function. The example below will ask you for your name using a dialog box. Please don't be alarmed by it. Go ahead and hit the Run button below.

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name = input("What's your name?")
print("Your name is", name)
 
 
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If you ran the code above, you know that the program causes a dialog to pop up that asks you for your name. Once you enter some text in the input field of the dialog and hit "OK", the input function "returns" the text you entered as a string. We assign that text to a variable (name in this case) and later make use of it in a print.

In future lessons, we'll go over this concept of functions "returning" stuff. Until then, you'll just have to remember that the syntax for accepting user input is destination_variable = input("Message to user").

Feel free to explore the input function above by trying various alterations. Can you add a second input to ask for the user's age and print that out as well?