Count string length but exclude some characters-CodePudding

I'm trying to take in string input and count them but exclude certain characters but it seems to be counting all the characters no matter what I do.

user_text = input()

count = 0

for i in user_text:
    if i in user_text != 'a':
        count  = 1

print(count)

CodePudding user response：

You should check if i is not equal to a

if i != 'a':

CodePudding user response：

Did you try with just

if i != 'a':

CodePudding user response：

More "pythonic" way could be:

user_text = input()

count = len([True for x in user_text if x != 'a'])

print(count)

CodePudding user response：

What you are doing is chaining comparison operators which is not what you want. Because your statement is the same as:

(i in user_text) and (user_text != 'a')

The first statement is always True, because you iterate over every character in user_text. The second statement is only False, when the user_text is a. You can try this by entering an a as input.

So to achieve what you want, you should use this statement as in other answers already suggested:

if i != 'a'

Small side note: It could help your understanding when you rename i to something like char, because i is most often used in for-loops that count from 0 to n. e.g. fo i in range(10)