While loop breaking

Question

Hi all,

I can't seem to get my while loop to break when my count (total) reaches 0.

I'm trying to make a function that calculates a factorial of a number, as an exercise. I want to input an integer into factorial(), and my function to return the total of that factorial.

A factorial is the multiplication of a number by every number lower than it, until 1. So if I run factorial(4), I want the function to calculate 4 * 3 * 2 * 1. If I input 6, I want it to calculate 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1.

1 def factorial(x):
2 total = int(x)
3 x = str(x)
4 if x == "1":
5 return total
6 else:
7 while int(x) > 0:
8 total *= (int(x) - 1)
9 x = int(x) - 1
10 if int(total) == 0:
11 break
12 return total

In the while loop, I am trying to say that if int(x) is greater than zero, the while loop should operate (line 7). I added at the end an if condition (line 10), saying that if total is equal to zero, the while loop should break.

When I run factorial(2), the result is 0. The result should be 2, as 2*1 = 2.

Can anyone offer a suggestion to make this work?

EDIT

I found a solution that gave me the answer that I was looking for:

1 def factorial(x):
2 total = int(x)
3 x = str(x)
4 if x == "1":
5 return total
6 else:
7 while int(x) > 0:
8 total *= x
9 x -=x
10 return total

I'm still not sure why my original code wasn't working though -- any help?

Answer 1

Joel
The whole root of problems is that u used str() int() conversions which u dont need in this case. Remove ALL of them. You should have only integers in this case, not strings so remove quotation marks from "1".

And yeah total should be 1 not x.
total = 1, because:
in the while loop x gets decreasing and gets multiplied to total so suppose x is 5.

total = total * x

1 = 1 * 5
5 = 5 * 4
20 = 20 * 3
60 = 60 * 2
120 = 120 * 1
120 answer.

And yeah, both of them are incorrect which u provided in question.

Answer 2

maf thank you! I made x into a string because I thought I had to for while to work. Thanks for the advice.

Answer 3

Joel np, this one is shorter.

def fact(x):
total = 1
while x - 1 != 0:
total *= x
x -= 1
return(total)