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Elif and Else Statements

  • Lesson
  • 2 min read
  • 2 of 5 in this chapter

What are elif and else statements

Sometimes, if one condition is not met, we want to see if another condition might be met, and if so, we want to run a different bit of code.

That’s where elif comes in handy. It’s basically a contraction of else if. On top of this, sometimes, if none of the conditions are met, we just want the program to run a certain set of alternate commands. This is where else comes in handy.

Syntax

It basically looks like this:

Python
if condition1:
	# code for condition1
elif condition2:
	# code for condition2
elif condition3:
	# code for condition3
else:
	# code if none are met

Do note that condition2, condition3, etc will all only be checked if the conditions listed above it are not met (not True).

Also, we can have an infinite number of elif statements but only one ‘else’ statement per if statement. Here is an example working with numbers…

Python
a = 5
b = 6
if a==b:
    print(‘a equals b’)
elif a > b:
    print(‘a is greater than b’)
else:
    print(‘a is less than b’)

OUTPUT

Text
a is less than b

Notice how we used an else statement for if a is less than b. We did this because we know that if we get to the else statement, the if and elif statement must have been False, meaning a had to be less than b.

Do note that we can use these statements with any data type. You can use booleans, floats, strings, integers, or even more complex ones you can find on the Official Python Documentation.