Python boolean expression and or

Question

In python if you write something like

foo==bar and spam or eggs

python appears to return spam if the boolean statement is true and eggs otherwise. Could someone explain this behaviour? Why is the expression not being evaluated like one long boolean?

Edit: Specifically, I'm trying to figure out the mechanism why 'spam' or 'eggs' is being returned as the result of the expression.

Answer 1

Try using parentheses to make the expression non-ambiguous. The way it is, you're getting:

(foo == bar and spam) or eggs

Answer 2

The reason is that Python evaluates boolean expression using the actual values of the variables involved, instead of restricting them to True and False values. The following values are considered to be false:

• None
• False
• 0 of any numeric type
• empty sequence or set ('', (), [], {})
• user-defined types with __nonzero__() or __len__() method that returns 0 or False

See the Truth Value Testing section of the Python documentation for more information. In particular:

Operations and built-in functions that have a Boolean result always return 0 or False for false and 1 or True for true, unless otherwise stated. (Important exception: the Boolean operations or and and always return one of their operands.)

Answer 3

The operators and and or are short-circuiting which means that if the result of the expression can be deduced from evaluating only the first operand, the second is not evaluated. For example if you have the expression a or b and a evaluates to true then it doesn't matter what b is, the result of the expression is true so b is not evaluated. They actually work as follows:

• a and b: If a is falsey, b is not evaluated and a is returned, otherwise b is returned.
• a or b: If a is truthy, b is not evaluated and a is returned, otherwise b is returned.

Falsey and truthy refer to values that evaluate to false or true in a boolean context.

However this and/or idiom was useful back in the days when there was no better alternative, but now there is a better way:

spam if foo==bar else eggs

The problem with the and/or idiom (apart from it being confusing to beginners) is that it gives the wrong result if the condition is true but spam evaluates to a falsey value (e.g. the empty string). For this reason you should avoid it.

Answer 4

This is how the Python boolean operators work.

From the documentation (the last paragraph explains why it is a good idea that the operators work the way they do):

In the context of Boolean operations, and also when expressions are used by control flow statements, the following values are interpreted as false: False, None, numeric zero of all types, and empty strings and containers (including strings, tuples, lists, dictionaries, sets and frozensets). All other values are interpreted as true. (See the __nonzero__() special method for a way to change this.)

The operator not yields True if its argument is false, False otherwise.

The expression x and y first evaluates x; if x is false, its value is returned; otherwise, y is evaluated and the resulting value is returned.

The expression x or y first evaluates x; if x is true, its value is returned; otherwise, y is evaluated and the resulting value is returned.

(Note that neither and nor or restrict the value and type they return to False and True, but rather return the last evaluated argument. This is sometimes useful, e.g., if s is a string that should be replaced by a default value if it is empty, the expression s or 'foo' yields the desired value. Because not has to invent a value anyway, it does not bother to return a value of the same type as its argument, so e.g., not 'foo' yields False, not ''.)