Conditional statements#

In this section, we will learn how to make choices in our code using conditional statements (if, elif, else) and Boolean values (True, False).

Basics of conditional statements#

Conditional statements can change the code behaviour based on certain conditions. The idea is simple: If a condition is met, then a set of actions will be performed.

A simple conditional statement#

Let’s look at a simple example with temperatures, and check if a temperature of 17 degrees Celsius is hot or not.

temperature = 17

if temperature > 25:
    print(f"{temperature} is hot!")
else:
    print(f"{temperature} is not hot!")

17 is not hot!

What did we do here? First, we used the if and else statements to determine what parts of the code to execute. The if statement checks to see whether the variable value for temperature is greater than 25 (hot by northern European standards). If this condition is true, '17 is hot' will be written to the screen. Since 17 is smaller than 25, the if condition is false and thus the code beneath the else statement is executed. The code under the else statement will run whenever the if condition is false.

Let’s update temperature to a “hot” temperature and repeat the same process.

temperature = 30

if temperature > 25:
    print(f"{temperature} is hot!")
else:
    print(f"{temperature} is not hot!")

30 is hot!

In this case, the if statement is true and thus '30 is hot' is printed.

How about if without else? The combination of if and else is very common, but the else statement is not strictly required. Python simply does nothing if the if statement is false and there is no else statement.

temperature = 17

if temperature > 25:
    print(f"{temperature} is greater than 25")

Makes sense, right? Conditional statements always check if the conditional expression evaluates as True or False. If true, the codeblock under the conditional statement gets executed. In this example, nothing is printed to the screen if temperature is smaller than 25.

Let’s look at another example from our daily lives. As it turns out, we all use logic similar to if and else conditional statements daily. Imagine you’re getting ready to leave your home for the day and want to decide what to wear. You might look outside to check the weather conditions. If it is raining, you will wear a rain jacket. Otherwise, you will not. Python uses the == operator to test if a value is exactly equal to another.

weather = "rain"

if weather == "rain":
    print("Wear a raincoat!")
else:
    print("No raincoat needed.")

Wear a raincoat!

As with for loops, Python uses colons (:) and white space (indentations) to structure conditional statements. If the condition is True, the indented code block after the colon (:) is executed. The code block may contain several lines of code, but they all must be indented equally. You will receive an IndentationError, a SyntaxError, or unwanted behavior if you haven’t indented your code correctly.

Note also that the case of the text being compared (uppercase or lowercase) is important. For instance, in the example above, if we define weather = "Rain", the comparison weather == "rain" would be false. One possible solution to this problem is to use the .lower() method for strings, which would convert the text to which it is applied to lowercase. In the example here, if we define weather = "Rain", the comparison weather.lower() == "rain" would be true!

Question 2.9#

We might also need some other rain gear on a rainy day. Think about how you could add another instruction after the weather == "rain" condition so that the code would tell us to:

Wear a raincoat
Wear rain boots

Comparison operators#

Comparison operators such as > and == compare the values on each side of the operator. Table 2.3 lists operators used for value comparisons in Python:

: Table 2.3. Comparison operators in Python.

Operator	Description	Comparison example	Result
`==`	Equal to	`"cat" == "dog"`	`False`
`!=`	Not equal to	`"cat" != "dog"`	`True`
`<`	Less than	`2 < 1`	`False`
`>`	Greater than	`2 > 1`	`True`
`<=`	Less than or equal to	`2 <= 2`	`True`
`>=`	Greater than or equal to	`2 >= 4`	`False`

Boolean values#

As shown in Table 2.3, comparison operations yield Boolean values (True or False). In Python, the words True and False are reserved for these Boolean values and cannot be used for other purposes.

To demonstrate this, let’s check the current value of the conditions we used in the previous examples:

temperature > 25

False

weather == "rain"

True

if, elif and else#

We can link several conditions together using the “else if” statement elif. Python checks the elif and else statements only if previous conditions were False. You can have multiple elif statements to check for additional conditions. Let’s create a chain of if, elif, and else statements that are able to tell us if the temperature is above freezing, exactly at the freezing point, or below freezing.

temperature = -3

if temperature > 0:
    print(f"{temperature} degrees Celsius is above freezing")
elif temperature == 0:
    print(f"{temperature} degrees Celsius is at the freezing point")
else:
    print(f"{temperature} degrees Celsius is below freezing")

-3 degrees Celsius is below freezing

Question 2.10#

Let’s assume that yesterday it was 14 °C, it is 10 °C outside today, and tomorrow it will be 13 °C. The following code compares these temperatures and prints something to the screen based on the comparison.

yesterday = 14
today = 10
tomorrow = 13

if yesterday <= today:
    print('A')
elif today != tomorrow:
    print('B')
elif yesterday > tomorrow:
    print('C')
elif today == today:
    print('D')

Which of the letters A, B, C, and D would be printed out?

Combining conditions#

We can also use the and and or operators to combine multiple conditions that use Boolean values (Table 2.4).

: Table 2.4. Logic for the and, or, and not operators in Python.

Operator	Description	Comparison example	Result
`and`	True only if both	`2 > 1 and 1 < 0`	`False`
	comparisons are true
`or`	True if either	`2 > 1 or 1 < 0`	`True`
	comparison is true
`not`	False if comparison is	`not 2 > 1`	`False`
	true and vice versa

With Table 2.4 in mind, let’s consider a few examples.

hot_temperature = 35.0
warm_temperature = 24.0
cold_temperature = -4.0

if (hot_temperature > warm_temperature) and (cold_temperature > warm_temperature):
    print("Both parts are true")
else:
    print("At least one part is not true")

At least one part is not true

if (hot_temperature < warm_temperature) or (cold_temperature < warm_temperature):
    print("At least one test is true")

At least one test is true

Later in this book we will also see how to use the bitwise operators & for and, and | for or.

Question 2.11#

Let’s return to our example about making decisions on a rainy day. Imagine that we consider not only the rain but also the wind speed (in meters per second). If it is windy or raining, we’ll just stay at home. If it’s not windy or raining, we can go out and enjoy the weather!

Let’s set 10 m/s as our comfort limit for wind speed in the conditional statement and see what our Python program tells us to do in these conditions.

As you can see, we better just stay home if it is windy or raining! If you don’t agree, you can modify the conditions and print statements accordingly.

Combining for loops and conditional statements#

Finally, we can also combine for loops and conditional statements. Let’s use a for loop to iterate over a list of temperatures and check whether the temperature is hot or not.

temperatures = [0, 28, 12, 17, 30]

# Loop over each temperature
# If the temperature is greater than 25, print "...is hot"
for temperature in temperatures:
    if temperature > 25:
        print(f"{temperature} is hot")
    else:
        print(f"{temperature} is not hot")

is not hot
is hot
is not hot
is not hot
is hot

Conditional statements

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