How to test multiple variables against a single value?

Question

I'm trying to make a function that will compare multiple variables to an integer and output a string of three letters. I was wondering if there was a way to translate this into Python. So say:

x = 0 y = 1 z = 3 mylist = []  if x or y or z == 0 :     mylist.append("c") if x or y or z == 1 :     mylist.append("d") if x or y or z == 2 :     mylist.append("e") if x or y or z == 3 :      mylist.append("f") 

which would return a list of:

["c", "d", "f"] 

Is something like this possible?

Answer 1

You misunderstand how boolean expressions work; they don't work like an English sentence and guess that you are talking about the same comparison for all names here. You are looking for:

if x == 1 or y == 1 or z == 1: 

x and y are otherwise evaluated on their own (False if 0, True otherwise).

You can shorten that using a containment test against a tuple:

if 1 in (x, y, z): 

or better still:

if 1 in {x, y, z}: 

using a set to take advantage of the constant-cost membership test (i.e. in takes a fixed amount of time whatever the left-hand operand is).

Explanation

When you use or, python sees each side of the operator as separate expressions. The expression x or y == 1 is treated as first a boolean test for x, then if that is False, the expression y == 1 is tested.

This is due to operator precedence. The or operator has a lower precedence than the == test, so the latter is evaluated first.

However, even if this were not the case, and the expression x or y or z == 1 was actually interpreted as (x or y or z) == 1 instead, this would still not do what you expect it to do.

x or y or z would evaluate to the first argument that is 'truthy', e.g. not False, numeric 0 or empty (see boolean expressions for details on what Python considers false in a boolean context).

So for the values x = 2; y = 1; z = 0, x or y or z would resolve to 2, because that is the first true-like value in the arguments. Then 2 == 1 would be False, even though y == 1 would be True.

The same would apply to the inverse; testing multiple values against a single variable; x == 1 or 2 or 3 would fail for the same reasons. Use x == 1 or x == 2 or x == 3 or x in {1, 2, 3}.

Answer 2

Your problem is more easily addressed with a dictionary structure like:

x = 0 y = 1 z = 3 d = {0: 'c', 1:'d', 2:'e', 3:'f'} mylist = [d[k] for k in [x, y, z]]