Python programming error, elif statment syntax error Simple code

Question

name=input("Hello person, Whats your name?")
print("Hello", name)
print("Do you want to hear a story?", name)
choice=input("Yes, No?")
if choice==("yes" or "yes " or "Yes" or "Yes "):
    print("Ok", name,", listen up")    
print("There was once an old, old house at the top of a hill Sooooo high it was above the clouds")
choice2=input("What do you want to call the house?")
print("The old,",choice2,"was once owned by an old lady. ")

elif choice==("maybe"):
    print("You found an easter egg, congrats. PS this does nothing")

Whats wrong with this code?? It says in the idle shell syntax error. The last elif statement isn't working.

I need new eyes after seeing this `if choice==("yes" or "yes " or "Yes" or "Yes "):` — bgusach, Nov 12 '14 at 16:05
@ikaros45 is right; this relates to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20002503/why-does-a-b-or-c-or-d-always-evaluate-to-true. — glglgl, Nov 12 '14 at 16:06
Try `if choice in ["yes","yes ","Yes","Yes "]` (although, what exactly are you planning for the case of more than a single space after the "yes"?). — barak manos, Nov 12 '14 at 16:06
try if choice.upper() == "YES". plenty of things wrong with that code mate. — Rui Lima, Nov 12 '14 at 16:07
@RuiLima still needs to strip white spaces: `choice.strip().upper() == 'YES'` — Rafael Barros, Nov 12 '14 at 16:16

Anshul Goyal · Answer 1 · 2014-11-12T16:14:06.520

This is a petty indentation issue, your print statements for the if blocks are not indented right and so the elif seems to be out of place. Note that python keeps track of logical blocks by the indentation.

name=input("Hello person, Whats your name?")
print("Hello", name)
print("Do you want to hear a story?", name)
choice=input("Yes, No?")
if choice==("yes" or "yes " or "Yes" or "Yes "):
    print("Ok", name,", listen up")    
    print("There was once an old, old house at the top of a hill Sooooo high it was above the clouds")
    choice2=input("What do you want to call the house?")
    print("The old,",choice2,"was once owned by an old lady. ")

elif choice==("maybe"):
    print("You found an easter egg, congrats. PS this does nothing")

As already pointed out, if choice==("yes" or "yes " or "Yes" or "Yes ") is wrong, use if choice.lower().strip() == "yes" instead, or if choice in ("yes", "yes ", "Yes", "Yes ").

If in case this is python 2, input will throw an error, use raw_input instead. Also print with multiple statements will throw errors as well if used like a function, so change them from print(statement_x, statement_y, statement_z) to print statement_x, statement_y, statement_z

Thanks this worked! just needed to add four spaces at the if statement blocks and the code works. — Nhoward292, Nov 12 '14 at 16:07
This still has problems, `if choice==("yes" or "yes " or "Yes" or "Yes "):` — Cory Kramer, Nov 12 '14 at 16:07
@Cyber Yeah, I know, but that has already been pointed out in comments to question. Other than that, if this is python 2, `input` will throw an error, `print` with multiple statements will throw errors as well. — Anshul Goyal, Nov 12 '14 at 16:08

Python programming error, elif statment syntax error Simple code

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