Why does checking a variable against multiple values with `OR` only check the first value? [duplicate]

by 
("Jesse" or "jesse")

The above expression tests whether or not "Jesse" evaluates to True. If it does, then the expression will return it; otherwise, it will return "jesse". The expression is equivalent to writing:

"Jesse" if "Jesse" else "jesse"

Because "Jesse" is a non-empty string though, it will always evaluate to True and thus be returned:

>>> bool("Jesse")  # Non-empty strings evaluate to True in Python
True
>>> bool("")  # Empty strings evaluate to False
False
>>>
>>> ("Jesse" or "jesse")
'Jesse'
>>> ("" or "jesse")
'jesse'
>>>

This means that the expression:

name == ("Jesse" or "jesse")

is basically equivalent to writing this:

name == "Jesse"

In order to fix your problem, you can use the in operator:

# Test whether the value of name can be found in the tuple ("Jesse", "jesse")
if name in ("Jesse", "jesse"):

Or, you can lowercase the value of name with str.lower and then compare it to "jesse" directly:

# This will also handle inputs such as "JeSSe", "jESSE", "JESSE", etc.
if name.lower() == "jesse":

More Related Contents:

  1. sort and swap in python same time
  2. tkinter creating buttons in for loop passing command arguments
  3. Find intersection of two nested lists?
  4. How to duplicate sys.stdout to a log file?
  5. What does %s mean in a Python format string?
  6. Remove quotes from String in Python
  7. What exactly is contained within a obj.__closure__?
  8. How to get if a key is pressed pygame [duplicate]
  9. python pandas extract year from datetime: df[‘year’] = df[‘date’].year is not working
  10. What is %timeit in Python?
  11. How to call Python functions dynamically
  12. Most efficient way to search the last X lines of a file?
  13. selecting across multiple columns with python pandas?
  14. Open PIL image from byte file
  15. sort dates in python array
  16. Django: Display Choice Value
  17. How to get the physical interface IP address from an interface
  18. What’s the algorithm of ‘set.intersection()’ in python?
  19. python dictionary passed as an input to a function acts like a global in that function rather than a local
  20. Using Matplotlib 3D axes, how to drag two axes at once
  21. Convert numpy type to python
  22. Django class-based view: How do I pass additional parameters to the as_view method?
  23. How to disable CSS in Python Selenium using ChromeDriver using ChromeOptions
  24. Is there a way to circumvent Python list.append() becoming progressively slower in a loop as the list grows?
  25. Rounding error in Python with non-odd number? [duplicate]
  26. Python syntax for “if a or b or c but not all of them”
  27. HTML to IMAGE using Python
  28. Split Python sequence (time series/array) into subsequences with overlap
  29. Find a 3×3 sliding window over an image
  30. How to match a substring in a string, ignoring case

Leave a Comment