The thing is, I'm at a point very early in the game, and some of the changes you made we haven't learned about yet in class. Also, we have very strict assignment specs, what you see in my code is the way my instructor INSISTS on things being done. So while my instructor encouraged us to ask around when we get stuck, I wouldn't feel right about copying portions of your code without really understanding them, and probably wouldn't have gotten credit...

bartonc,

If I could just ask you one more question, you'll be free of me (at least for the rest of this evening). Thank you for your help so far. I have finished my program, however, I am still having a hard time getting my "sum" into each of the different functions in order to compare it with other column/row/diagonal sums. After I calculated the sum in a definition, I figured if I defined "sum" as that definition...

Thanks for the reply bartonc. I now get this error:

...

Hello,

I am a 1st semester Computer Science student in a Python class. Our current assignment calls for us to read a list from a file, create a 2-dimensional list from the file, and check to see whether or not 2-dim list constitutes a "magic square" (i.e. all the rows, columns and diagonals equal each other when added). We are to create several definitions, and I have had no problem reading from the file, creating the list,...