Number Guessing Game exercise - tests failing

Backend Development
1

Hi everyone, I’m struggling to get 2 final tests to pass on this one and have run out of ideas. As far as I can see it all works as it should so can’t figure out why they are failing. Any help appreciated!

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#!/bin/bash

PSQL="psql --username=freecodecamp --dbname=number_guess -t --no-align -c"

echo -e "Enter your username:"
read ENTERED_USERNAME

# check database for username
USER_DATA=$($PSQL "SELECT username, games_played, best_game FROM users WHERE username='$ENTERED_USERNAME'")
# echo $USER_DATA

if [[ -z $USER_DATA ]]
# New user
then
  echo -e "Welcome, $ENTERED_USERNAME! It looks like this is your first time here."
  GAMES_PLAYED=0; BEST_GAME=0
  ADD_USER_RESULT=$($PSQL "INSERT INTO users(username, games_played, best_game) VALUES('$ENTERED_USERNAME',$GAMES_PLAYED, $BEST_GAME)")
  USERNAME=$ENTERED_USERNAME
# Existing user
else
  # save returned user data to variables
  IFS='|' read -r USERNAME GAMES_PLAYED BEST_GAME <<< "$USER_DATA"
  # echo "variables $USERNAME $GAMES_PLAYED $BEST_GAME"
  # print welcome back message to user
  echo -e "Welcome back, $USERNAME! You have played $GAMES_PLAYED games, and your best game took $BEST_GAME guesses."
fi

# Start game
# Initialise game variables
# Define the minimum and maximum values of the range
MIN_NUMBER=1; MAX_NUMBER=1000
NUMBER_RANGE=$(( MAX_NUMBER - MIN_NUMBER + 1))
# Generate a random number within the range
SECRET_NUMBER=$(( RANDOM % NUMBER_RANGE + MIN_NUMBER ))
# - zero the number of guesses
NUMBER_OF_GUESSES=0

PLAY_GAME(){
  GUESS=$1
  PATTERN='^[1-9][0-9]*$'

  # check if guess is an integer
  if [[ "$GUESS" =~ $PATTERN   ]]
    then
    # It's a valid guess
    # Increment the NUMBER_OF_GUESSES variable
    (( NUMBER_OF_GUESSES += 1 ))

    # Check the guess
    if [[ $GUESS -eq $SECRET_NUMBER ]]
      then
        echo -e "You guessed it in $NUMBER_OF_GUESSES tries. The secret number was $SECRET_NUMBER. Nice job!"
        # Save user stats to db:
        # - Increment number of games and update in db
        (( GAMES_PLAYED +=1 ))
        UPDATE_GAMESCOUNT_RESULT=$($PSQL "UPDATE users SET games_played=$GAMES_PLAYED WHERE username='$USERNAME' ")

        # - Overwrite best game score (if latest is lower than current or if current is zero) and update in db
        if [[ $BEST_GAME -eq 0 ]]; then
          BEST_GAME=$NUMBER_OF_GUESSES
          UPDATE_BESTGAME_RESULT=$($PSQL "UPDATE users SET best_game=$BEST_GAME WHERE username='$USERNAME' ")
        elif [[ $NUMBER_OF_GUESSES -lt $BEST_GAME ]]; then
          BEST_GAME=$NUMBER_OF_GUESSES
          UPDATE_BESTGAME_RESULT=$($PSQL "UPDATE users SET best_game=$BEST_GAME WHERE username='$USERNAME' ")
        fi

    elif [[ $GUESS -lt $SECRET_NUMBER  ]]
      then
        echo -e "It's higher than that, guess again:"
        read NEW_GUESS
        PLAY_GAME $NEW_GUESS

    elif [[ $GUESS -gt $SECRET_NUMBER  ]]
      then
        echo -e "It's lower than that, guess again:"
        read NEW_GUESS
        PLAY_GAME $NEW_GUESS
    else
      echo "Not sure how you got here....?"
    fi

  else
    # Not a valid guess
    echo -e "That is not an integer, guess again:"
    read NEW_GUESS
    PLAY_GAME $NEW_GUESS
  fi
}

echo -e "Guess the secret number between 1 and 1000:"
read GUESS
PLAY_GAME $GUESS
2

To anyone reading this with the same problem (judging by the number of posts it seems pretty common). I have finally got it to pass today just by refactoring my code a bit. I didn’t change anything significant, just changed the structure a bit - same code, different order. I think there must be something in the way the test suite is written that it expects you to solve it in a certain way and if you do it differently it fails.

Things that worked for me:

  1. Move around the code where you increment the variables for number of games and number of guesses. I was doing this inside the conditional that checked if it was a valid guess etc. Moving it much ‘higher’ in the code helped I think, outside the IF statements. Same with incrementing the games - do it straight away once the user starts playing.

  1. Pay attention to where it says in the instuctions that the script has to finish after it prints the winning message. I had some code running after printing this to update the database and so on. So do all that first and then as the very last operation before the ‘fi’ of the IF statement print the “You guessed it in $NUMBER_OF_GUESSES …”.

  2. Hit ‘test’ a few times! Mine failed and then just by retrying with no code changes it passed.

Hopefully that helps someone. Good luck!

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