# Leap Given a year, report if it is a leap year. The tricky thing here is that a leap year in the Gregorian calendar occurs: ```text on every year that is evenly divisible by 4 except every year that is evenly divisible by 100 unless the year is also evenly divisible by 400 ``` For example, 1997 is not a leap year, but 1996 is. 1900 is not a leap year, but 2000 is. If your language provides a method in the standard library that does this look-up, pretend it doesn't exist and implement it yourself. ## Notes Though our exercise adopts some very simple rules, there is more to learn! For a delightful, four minute explanation of the whole leap year phenomenon, go watch [this youtube video][video]. [video]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX96xng7sAE ## Exception messages Sometimes it is necessary to raise an exception. When you do this, you should include a meaningful error message to indicate what the source of the error is. This makes your code more readable and helps significantly with debugging. Not every exercise will require you to raise an exception, but for those that do, the tests will only pass if you include a message. To raise a message with an exception, just write it as an argument to the exception type. For example, instead of `raise Exception`, you should write: ```python raise Exception("Meaningful message indicating the source of the error") ``` ## Running the tests To run the tests, run the appropriate command below ([why they are different](https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest/issues/1629#issue-161422224)): - Python 2.7: `py.test leap_test.py` - Python 3.4+: `pytest leap_test.py` Alternatively, you can tell Python to run the pytest module (allowing the same command to be used regardless of Python version): `python -m pytest leap_test.py` ### Common `pytest` options - `-v` : enable verbose output - `-x` : stop running tests on first failure - `--ff` : run failures from previous test before running other test cases For other options, see `python -m pytest -h` ## Submitting Exercises Note that, when trying to submit an exercise, make sure the solution is in the `$EXERCISM_WORKSPACE/python/leap` directory. You can find your Exercism workspace by running `exercism debug` and looking for the line that starts with `Workspace`. For more detailed information about running tests, code style and linting, please see the [help page](http://exercism.io/languages/python). ## Source JavaRanch Cattle Drive, exercise 3 [http://www.javaranch.com/leap.jsp](http://www.javaranch.com/leap.jsp) ## Submitting Incomplete Solutions It's possible to submit an incomplete solution so you can see how others have completed the exercise.