Python Värmland

Part 3: If statements and indentation

Now it's time to look at Python's if statement. They are used to make decisions - for example, in a number guessing game, we can use if to say that "if the user's guess is correct, then end the game", and so on. We'll start with the short version; if you're new to Python, then skip ahead to the full version below it.

The short version - for experienced programmers

Create a new file, and call it if_statements.py:

# How if statements work in Python
answer = input("Which is the best movie ever made? ")

# Don't miss the colon at the end of the if line.
if answer == "Quest for the Holy Grail":
    # Note the indentation. Whitespace is SIGNIFICANT
    # in Python. It's used to denote blocks, rather
    # than curly braces or similar.
    print("Correct! And there was much rejoicing.")
elif answer == "Life of Brian":  # elif == else if
    print("Close, but not quite right.")
else:
    print("Wrong answer! Ni! Ni! NI!!")

# Ask user for age, and check if they are a teenager
# Use int() to convert from string to int
age = int(input("How old are you? "))

# 'and', 'or', and 'not' works as expected
if age >= 13 and age <= 19:
    print("You are a teenager.")
else:
    print("You are NOT a teenager.")

The full version - for beginner programmers

Answer to the exercise in Part 2

Here's one possible answer to the exercise from Part 2.

height = input("Please enter height: ")
width = input("Please enter width: ")

height = int(height)
width = int(width)

area = height * width

print(f"The area is {area}.")

Okay! Now it's time to learn how if statements work.

If statements

"if" is a very important statement in programming. It lets you make decisions, and handle situations differently depending on various circumstances. It's not as complicated as it might sound - let me show you an example. Go to IDLE, and create a new file (File, then New file in the menu).

answer = input("Which is the best movie ever made?")

if answer == "Quest for the Holy Grail":
    print("Correct! And there was much rejoicing.")

Save it (Control-s, giving it the name if-statements.py), and run it (F5). If you've done everything correctly, you will see the message:

Which is the best movie ever made? Quest for the Holy Grail
Correct! And there was much rejoicing.

If you type something other than exactly Quest for the Holy Grail, you will get no response at all. We'll fix that in a moment, but first let's go through his little program line by line and see how it works.

answer = input("Which is the best movie ever made? ")

Here, we ask the user for their choice of best movie ever by using the input function we learned about in Part 2: User input.

The two last lines are more interesting:

if answer == "Quest for the Holy Grail":
    print("Correct! And there was much rejoicing.")

We start the first line with "if". Then, we have what is known as a "condition" where we compare, using == (not just a single equals sign), the user's answer to the correct answer. We end the line with a colon. If the condition "is true" as a programmer would put it - if the user's answer is indeed equal to the correct answer - then we will continue to the next line which prints a message.

Indentation

Now is the time to bring up "indentation" in Python. As you can see, the print line is "indented" by four spaces (always use four spaces, and nothing else - no tabs, not two spaces - use four spaces). Whenever you have an if statement, it must be followed by an indented "block" - that is, the following line or lines must be indented compared to the if line. All those lines that are indented, will only be executed if the if statement is true.

The else clause

Sometimes, you also want to do something if the condition after the if statement isn't true. Think of it like this: "if the closest store is open, then go there. Otherwise, go to the 24/7 supermarket." Or, to put it in slightly more Python-like terms:

if the closest store is open:
    go there
else:
    go to the 24/7 supermarket

Note that the above isn't proper Python code though. However, let's write some proper code - let's add to our previous if-statements.py program:

answer = input("Which is the best movie ever made?")

if answer == "Quest for the Holy Grail":
    print("Correct! And there was much rejoicing.")
else:
    print("Wrong answer! Ni! Ni! NI!!")

Let's see what happens if we run that, and we give it the name of another movie instead:

Which is the best movie ever made? The water boy
Wrong answer! Ni! Ni! NI!!

That works as expected. Nice! But what if you want to have several different "elses"? You can solve that with something called elif, which is short for "else if":

answer = input("Which is the best movie ever made?")

if answer == "Quest for the Holy Grail":
    print("Correct! And there was much rejoicing.")
elif answer == "Life of Brian":
    print("Close, but not quite right.")
else:
    print("Wrong answer! Ni! Ni! NI!!")

See how that works? You can have one if, then you can have as many elifs as you want (or none), and then you can have an else if you want.

Other comparison operators

We've used == in our conditions so far (remember, if we have if answer == "yes", then the "condition" is answer == "yes"). So we can use == to check if something is "equal" to something else. But what if we want to check if something is not equal to something else? Well, the good news is that there are several types of "comparison operators", as they're called. Here's a table of some of the most important ones.

As you can see in the table above, if we want to check if something is different from something else - if it is "not equal to", we use the != comparison operator:

if user_input != "yes":
    print("Okay, let's not do that then.")

Some comparison operators make more sense when used with numbers:

if age > 17:
    print("You are considered an adult.")
else:
    print("You are not yet considered an adult.")

and / or operators

You can also use the words and / or in your conditions:

if age >= 13 and age <= 19:
    print("You are a teenager.")
else:
    print("You are NOT a teenager.")

What we've done here is we have taken two conditions (age >= 13), followed by (age <= 19), and put the word and between them, which means that both conditions must be true, just like in the sentence "if your age is more than or equal to 13 and your age is less than or equal to 19, then you are a teenager".

Here's a slightly different way of accomplishing the same thing, only with using the operator or instead of and:

if age < 13 or age > 19:
    print("You are NOT a teenager.")
else:
    print("You are a teenager.")

As you might have guessed, this basically says "if your age is less than 13, or your age is greater than 19, then you are NOT a teenager."

Exercise

Now it's time to put what we have learned to the test. You know how people sometimes say that a dog year is about the same as seven human years? This is not entirely accurate, but for the sake of this excercise, let's ignore that fact.

Your task is to make a program that compares a human's age to that of a dog (converted into "human years"). That is to say, multiply a dog's age by seven, and check if it is higher, equal, or lower than a human's age. If you don't have a dog, just pretend that you do and make up an age for it.

Some pointers:

• Have to program ask for the user's age, as well as the dog's age.
• In Part 2: User input we learned how to ask the user a question using the function input.
• Also, remember that we have to convert the user's response to a proper integer using the function int.
• You can multiply using an asterisk, *.
• Have the program tell the user if the dog is younger, older, or the same age as them.

You will find a suggested solution in the next part. Until then!

Previous: Part 2: User input | Next: Part 4: While loops | Index