Using OR comparisons with IF statements [duplicate]

Question

When using IF statements in Python, you have to do the following to make the "cascade" work correctly.

if job == "mechanic" or job == "tech":
        print "awesome"
elif job == "tool" or job == "rock":
        print "dolt"

Is there a way to make Python accept multiple values when checking for "equals to"? For example,

if job == "mechanic" or "tech":
    print "awesome"
elif job == "tool" or "rock":
    print "dolt"

Answer 1

if job in ("mechanic", "tech"):
    print "awesome"
elif job in ("tool", "rock"):
    print "dolt"

The values in parentheses are a tuple. The in operator checks to see whether the left hand side item occurs somewhere inside the right handle tuple.

Note that when Python searches a tuple or list using the in operator, it does a linear search. If you have a large number of items on the right hand side, this could be a performance bottleneck. A larger-scale way of doing this would be to use a frozenset:

AwesomeJobs = frozenset(["mechanic", "tech", ... lots of others ])
def func():
    if job in AwesomeJobs:
        print "awesome"

The use of frozenset over set is preferred if the list of awesome jobs does not need to be changed during the operation of your program.