CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-2.7
sambeth
sambeth

Reputation: 1590

I keep getting zero division error

Write a program that prompts for a file name, then opens that file and reads through the file, looking for lines of the form: X-DSPAM-Confidence: 0.8475 Count these lines and extract the floating point values from each of the lines and compute the average of those values and produce an output

This is my python code

# Use the file name mbox-short.txt as the file name
fname = raw_input("Enter file name: ")
fh = open(fname)
inp = fh.read()
count = 0
total = 0
for line in inp:
    if not line.strip().startswith("X-DSPAM-Confidence:") : continue
    pos = line.find(':')
    num = float(line[pos+1:]) 
    total = float(total + num)
    count = float(count + 1)
print 'Average spam confidence:', float(total/count)

I don't really know whats going on because i keep getting a zero division error on line 13(last line of the code)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 603

Answers (3)

nagyben
nagyben

Reputation: 938

Your if statement is skipping the rest of the for loop because line.strip.startwith("X-DSPAM-Confidence:") always evaluates to false.

Then, count is never incremented and thus stays at 0 the whole time, leading to your division by zero error.

Upvotes: 1

Our Man in Bananas
Our Man in Bananas

Reputation: 5981

What happens when the string X-DSPAM-Confidence: is not found?

If your code doesn't find that string then the Count var is always zero, so this is one situation where you would get a division by zero error.

Try checking the value of Count before you calculate at the end...

maybe:

If Count>0 print 'Average spam confidence:', float(total/count)

(That may not be the correct python syntax, as I have never used python)

Upvotes: 1

Domain
Domain

Reputation: 11808

i thing its not reading file properly so it wont be entering the for loop

fh = open(fname)
inp = fh.read()

try this and check if its entering the for 

fname = raw_input("Enter file name: ")
fh = open(fname)
inp = fh.read()
count = 0
total = 0
for line in inp:
  print inp

Upvotes: 0

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