Over 9000 Challenge- (While Loop)

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#1

Hi all,
I’m practising while-loop on this “Over 9000 Challenge”

Here’s the coding question:

Create a function named over_nine_thousand() that takes a list of numbers named lst as a parameter.

The function should sum the elements of the list until the sum is greater than 9000. When this happens, the function should return the sum. If the sum of all of the elements is never greater than 9000, the function should return total sum of all the elements. If the list is empty, the function should return 0.

For example, if lst was [8000, 900, 120, 5000], then the function should return 9020.

Here’s my code:

def over_nine_thousand(lst):
  total = 0
  index = 0
  while total < 9000:
    total += lst[index]
    index += 1
    if total > 9000:
      break
  return total

I’m getting an error of:

list index out of range

I’m not sure why the error?

#2

Consider these cases where your code tries to access an out of range index:

  • If lst is [], then lst[index] will try to access lst[0] but an empty list doesn’t have any elements, so an index of 0 is out of range.

  • If lst consists of elements whose sum is not greater than 9000, then your while condition will always be true. The if condition will never be true, so break will not execute. Yet, you will keep incrementing index till you go out of range. For example if lst is [8000, 20, 30], then lst[index] will eventually try to access lst[3] which is out of range.

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