unsupported operand type(s) for /: 'str' and 'int' [duplicate]

Question

I am new to Python and am learning some basics. I would like to know why I am getting this error. The code is:

Hours = raw_input ("How many Hours you worked for today : ")
minutes = (Hours * 60)
Percentage = (minutes * 100) / 60
print "Today you worked : ", "percentage"

Answer 1

You have to convert your Hours variable to a number, since raw_input() gives you a string:

Hours = int(raw_input("How many hours you worked for today: "))

The reason why this is failing so late is because * is defined for string and int: it "multiplies" the string by the int argument. So if you type 7 at the prompt, you'll get:

Hours = '7'
minutes = '777777....77777'        # 7 repeated 60 times
Percentage = '77777....77777' / 60 # 7 repeated 60*100 = 6000 times

So when it tries to do / on a string and a number it finally fails.

Answer 2

Hours is read as a string. First convert it to an integer:

Hours = int(raw_input("..."))

Note that Hours*60 works because that concatenates Hours with itself 60 times. But that certainly is not what you want so you have to convert to int at the first opportunity.

Answer 3

Your value Hours is a string. To convert to an integer,

Hours = int(raw_input("How many hours you worked for today : "))

Values in Python have a specific type, and although a string may contain only digits, you still can't treat it as a number without telling Python to convert it. This is unlike some other languages such as Javascript, Perl, and PHP, where the language automatically converts the type when needed.