code works in python shell, but not in a terminal

[Pedroski55]

I have a simple program to put passport size photos next to the correct name in an excel table.

In the python shell, everything works and it does just what I want.

I use Ubuntu 16.04. When I start a terminal and run the program, I get the following error: (the ^ does not display properly on this web page, in a terminal it is directly under the :)

pedro@pedro-dodgySSD:~/myPython$ ./putPicsinColumn1version4.py
File "./putPicsinColumn1version4.py", line 75
for sheet in sheets:
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
pedro@pedro-dodgySSD:~/myPython$

This seems to tell me the colon is wrong, but I'm certain it is needed in Python.

Line 75 is the first line below, the code is:

for sheet in sheets:
      wb.active = wb[sheet]
      print('Active Sheet is ' + str(wb.active))
      print('Max row is ' + str(wb.active.max_row))
      for rowNum in range(beginRow, wb.active.max_row + 1):
          print('resizing row height in ' + str(wb.active))
          wb.active.row_dimensions[rowNum].height = 72 # about 1"

As I said, this works when I test it in the idle shell, just not when I want to run it in terminal. Anyone know why? Anyone had this kind of problem?

[Gribouillis]

You may have mixed space characters with hard tab characters in the indentation. Make sure your editor is configured to enter 4 space characters when you hit the tab space.

You can reindent the code with the reindent command, to do this in a terminal do

Output:
python -m pip install reindent
reindent putPicsinColumn1version4.py

then reopen the file. The original version of the file is kept as putPicsinColumn1versio4.py.bak

[buran]

in the example you show here lines 2-5 are indented 5 spaces, I guess you use 4 spaces by default, like at lines 6-7
also check the line just before the line where the error is shown (75), maybe it's there (e.g. missing bracket)

[Pedroski55]

Well the idle3 editor is set to put 4 spaces for a tab.

The bit of my little program that does the work was very difficult to indent. In the end, I tried this, which works every time in the idle3 python shell.

for sheet in sheets:
	activeDirectory = pathToPhotos + sheet + '/'
	print('the active photo directory is ' + activeDirectory)
	for filename in os.listdir(activeDirectory):
			if not (filename.endswith('.jpg')):
				continue
			for rowNum in range(beginRow, wb[sheet].max_row + 1):
				getName = filename.split('.')
				if (getName[0] == wb[sheet].cell(row=rowNum, column=col).value):
					print('found the name! Name is: %s ' % (getName[0]))
					print('Putting pic in row ' + str(rowNum))
					img = Image(activeDirectory + filename)
					wb[sheet].add_image(img, 'A' + str(rowNum))

Seems like the indents are all over the place, but it works each time in the python shell. However, in a bash terminal, it never gets that far, because of the above mentioned problem with the colon.

[Gribouillis]

We'll try to see if there is an invisible hidden character in the source file. Try this in a python shell,
in a directory containing the script

>>> for line in open('putPicsinColumn1version4.py'):
...     print(repr(line))
...

Then look around 'for sheet in sheets' in the output to see if there is something special there. Hidden characters may appear when someone copies and pastes a section of code from a pdf file into a code editor for example.

[Pedroski55]

Thank you, I tried that but there was no hidden character.

Turns out, I had missed a bracket in the line 70 print('Resizing the row heights for row %s to max_row...' % (startRow))

I forgot the last bracket. After that, the routine almost worked, except in line 60 I needed to put str(startRow) because startRow is an integer.

Now it works, and I have learned about the power of brackets!!

Thanks for your good advice!