While loop or for loop? (python)

Question

I am very new to programming and I am just starting out with python. I found some exercises to practice a little bit and i got stuck at while and for loops.

I want to design a program that asks for a donation, and keeps asking for this donation until the minimum amount of 50 euro is donated. WHen this minimum or more is reached i want to stop the program and thank people for the donation.

My code looks like this:

donation = raw_input("enter your donation: ")

while donation < 50:
        donation= raw_input("We are sorry that's not enough, enter again: ")
        if donation >= 50 print "thank you for the donation"

but this doesn't work at all, i feel like i am missing something completely here.

Who could help me write a working code?

Answer 1

The if condition within the while loop shouldn't be necessary at all. The loop will continue until donation >= 50 so you should just be able to print the message after the loop:

donation = raw_input("enter your donation: ")

while donation < 50:
        donation= raw_input("We are sorry that's not enough, enter again: ")

print "thank you for the donation"

Answer 2

The actual problem with your code has nothing to do with the loop. As David pointed out, you can write that better, but what you have works , it's just a bit verbose.

The problem is that you're comparing strings to numbers. raw_input always returns a string. And no string is ever less than any number. So, donation < 50 will never be true.

What you need is to turn it into an int (or float or Decimal or some other kind of number, whatever's appropriate):

donation = int(raw_input("enter your donation: "))

while donation < 50:
    donation = int(raw_input("We are sorry that's not enough, enter again: "))
    if donation >= 50: print "thank you for the donation"

Answer 3

if donation >= 50: print "thank you for the donation"