On 04/02/16 23:26, Tom Brodle wrote: > While true: > Turn LED on > sleep 5 seconds > Turn LED off > sleep .5 seconds
> # Coming from the world of Basic I did/do not understand what made the > program loop > # back to while True: line of code. Its the indentation In BASIC you would write WHILE TRUE TURN LED ON SLEEP 5s TURN LED OFF Sleep 0.5s WEND In Python the Wend is implicit in the indentation. > # I wanted the LED to turn on and then off and stay off, In that case you didn't want a while loop, you just wanted a sequence: Turn LED on sleep 5 seconds Turn LED off > # page I became aware of quit(code=None) and inserted it That quits the entire program. That's OK if that's what you want but if yyou need to do something else after wards its not too helpful. If you really want to break out of a 'while True' loop you need to use the 'break' statement, usually inside some kind of if statement while True if some condition: break # exit the loop do whatever the loop does > GPIO.cleanup() > # I was told to put this line in but I do not know where it goes Probably after the loop - that is without any indentation. You are best to put it in a 'finally' clause like this try: while True: loop code here finally: # always executed GPIO.cleanup() Then even if you hit an error condition that forces an exit from the loop the finally is guaranteed to be executed. > #The code did turn the LED on once and then it did stay off, > but it gave me a message that the program is still running. > I did not think that programs actually did stop until the > power was removed. Probably not because the while never exits. BTW the LED is not really staying on from the look of things. Its turning on for 5 seconds then off for 0.5s. Its just that the off is too short to notice. For more about Python loops you can check out my tutorial below. (While loops are coverd about half way down the loops topic) If you know BASIC the examples are nearly all repeated in VBScript (a form of BASIC) so you should recognise the patterns. -- Alan G Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.alan-g.me.uk/ http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor