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Python Python Collections (2016, retired 2019) Tuples Packing

Posted by Dave Noonan
Dave Noonan
1,891 Points

Feedback

This is not a request for help, this is feedback about "check my work" and the messages it returns.

In my code I had a typo wherein a variable named args was typed as arg. The problem is that the error message I got was "couldn't find multiply".

WTF? That is totally confusing and not even a little bit helpful. Many of the error messages are like that and I frequently have to pull my code out to run on my PC which kind of defeats the purpose of the web based interpreter.

Feedback: Show the student the actual error message instead of nonsense that will leave them confused and frustrated.

twoples.py 
def multiply(*args):
    product = 1
    for num in arg:
        product *= num
    return product

1 Answer

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,457 Points
Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,457 Points

Thanks for the feedback. That is a confusing error message. Treehouse is in the process of improving the challenges to provide more meaningful responses.

In this case, because of the typo on "arg", it raises a NameError since it hasn't been defined. This causes the parser to stop without finishing the compile of the multiply function. Hence, when the checker tries to run the code, no "multiply" is found. This error is similar to the error "Task 1 is no longer working". Both scenarios are caused by newly introduced typos that break the current code or previously passing code. B