# summing up all numbers from 0 to N, using a for loop import string #importing some useful string methods # get N from the user, keep asking until an integer is entered while True: my_string = raw_input("please enter N: ") # this line removes whitespace from the beginning and the end. my_string = string.strip(my_string) position = 0 # we will set illegal_flag to true if we find proof that the string is # not a valid integer illegal_flag = False # skip any minus sign at the beginning if position < len(my_string): character = my_string[position] if character == "-": #skip minus sign position = position + 1 # we now should get a string of consecutive digits. Let's count how many. digit_count = 0 while position < len(my_string): character = my_string[position] if character in "0123456789": position = position + 1 digit_count = digit_count + 1 else: illegal_flag = True break if digit_count == 0: illegal_flag = True if (illegal_flag == True): print "String", my_string, "is not a valid integer." else: break N = int(my_string) # compute the sum total = 0 for i in range(0, N+1): total = total + i # print the result print "total =", total