> You might better do > > bet = int(raw_input("Enter your bet")) > > because then you don't need to later on convert bet again and again.
This is all fine until you give it to an end-user. This is what I picture: $ ./script.py Enter your bet: $10 .. or perhaps "ten", "all", or a jillion other tainted inputs. Python will try to cast these strings, but will slap you with a ValueError instead (an error of some sort, at least). There needs to be a "user_io" or "sanitize" module in the standard library to take care of this stuff. Like: import userio logic = userio.userio() number = logic.getNumeric("blah: ") # will offer the user a "re-do" in case of bad input number = logic.forceGetNumeric("Enter your bet!: ") # even if input is tainted, will return some number text = logic.getText("blargh: ") # return all text text = logic.setValidText("[A-Za-z]") text = logic.forceGetText("blargh: ") # return some text, strips invalid chars ... but there isn't, as far as I know. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list