help on ultra newbie program please

[Erik Max Francis]

cybernut wrote:

> What does that mean? if something == , != ect. something: makes sense
> to me,
> but is that some kind of shortcut ...

if (and other condition-testing structures) just tests whether or not
the expression is "true."  In Python, everything is considered true
except None, False, numeric zeroes, empty builtin container types
(strings, tuples, lists, dictionaries, etc.), and custom types which
override their __nonzero__ or __len__ methods appropriately:

	http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/truth.html#l2h-78

	if x == y: ...

is simply a special case of this, because the expression (x == y)
returns a value which is considered true if x equals y, and one
considered false otherwise.

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