Learn String Manipulation by Building a Cipher - Step 42

Python
1

Tell us what’s happening:

Hi

Im having trouble understanding where to “add the space” , and what does “currently stored in char” mean?

Your code so far


# User Editable Region

text = 'Hello World'
shift = 3
alphabet = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
encrypted_text = ''

for char in text.lower():
    if char == (" "):
        encrypted_text += (" ")
    index = alphabet.find(char)
    new_index = index + shift
    encrypted_text += (alphabet[new_index])
    print('char:', char, 'encrypted text:', encrypted_text)

# User Editable Region

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Challenge Information:

Learn String Manipulation by Building a Cipher - Step 42

2

Hi there,

First of all, don’t wrap the string inside the parentheses: (" ").
Just " " is correct.

Secondly,

The instruction asked us to:

use the addition assignment operator to add the space to the current value of encrypted_text.

So, what you did:

encrypted_text += " "

is correct.

BUT:

Let’s take a look at the if statement:

if char == " ":
        encrypted_text += " "

The encrypted_text += " " expression only happen when char == " " right?
That means, at that time when the expression above happens, the value of char is " ".
That’s what " the space (currently stored in char)" mean.

So, instead of

use the addition assignment operator to add the space to the current value of encrypted_text

we can just

use the addition assignment operator to add char to the current value of encrypted_text

That’s what the instruction means.

2 Likes
3

Wow, thank you for a very good explanation!

1 Like
4

I’m dying inside from still not understanding this explanation. I completed it, but because I’m so confused on the why behind this lesson, I’m not wanting to move fwd yet. So far there is quite a few things along the way that, yes I got them right… but very unsettling why most of what I’m doing isn’t truly “clicking” yet.

5

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