Looping through nested elements and updating the original list

[deanhystad]

Please wrap code in Python tags so it retains indenting and wrap output in output tags so it isn't confused for regular text in the post. There are buttons in the editor.

You need to modify values in attributes, or in elements. Modifying the value of score does nothing to your attributes list.

points = 30
attributes = [["Strength:", 0],["Endurance:", 0],["Wisdom:", 0],["Dexterity:", 0]]

for element in attributes:
    print("\nAdd points to", element[0])
    add_points = int(input(""))
    if points - add_points < 0:
        print("Error. You do not have enough points.")
    else:
        element[1] += add_points  # <= Need to change value in element
        points -= add_points
    print(element)

print(attributes)
print(points)

You should not be using a list of lists for attributes. attributes is a dictionary mapping names to scores, you should make it a Python dictionary.

points = 30
attributes = {"Strength":0, "Endurance":0, "Wisdom":0, "Dexterity":0}

for element in attributes:
    add_points = min(int(input(f"\nAdd points to {element}: ")), points)
    attributes[element] += add_points
    points -= add_points
    print(element, attributes[element])
    if points <= 0:
        print('You are out of points')
        break

print(attributes)
print(points)

Now that attributes is a dictionary you can use attribute['Strength"] to get the value of the Strength attribute. Isn't that better than attribute[0][1]?