How would I save time with or statements in Python?

Question

I'm writing a AI program in Python and want to save time when interacting with the bot. Instead of using this code:

if "how are you" or "How are you" in talk:
     perform_action()

I want to be able to interpret it even if it's not capitalize or not. If you don't what I'm saying let's say I asked the bot, "how are you?", but the bot was only programmed to answer to that question if it was said like this, "How are you?". I want to simplify the coding so I won't have to use a "or" statement. Please provide example code.

It's really important to note that the code you wrote above, as written, will not work as you expect it to. It will *always* evaluate to True, and perform_action() will always be called. The conditional can be parsed as [if ("how are you") or ("How are you" in talk):], which always returns true, because "how are you" evaluates to true. What you want is probably [if "how are you" in talk or "How are you" in talk:] — JohnFilleau, Aug 07 '14 at 19:02

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 09 '10 at 21:54

2

if talk.upper() == "HOW ARE YOU":
    perform_action()

or, if you prefer to search for substrings

if "HOW ARE YOU" in talk.upper():
    perform_action()

answered Oct 09 '10 at 21:54

Jim Brissom

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 09 '10 at 21:54

1

Easy way would be to lowercase everything:

if "how are you" == talk.lower():

answered Oct 09 '10 at 21:54

cobbal

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You should [normalize to uppercase](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386042.aspx). – Frédéric Hamidi Oct 09 '10 at 21:57
@Frédéric Hamidi since they won't be needing to be converted back, I don't see a reason to, although I could be reading it wrong – cobbal Oct 10 '10 at 00:01

How would I save time with or statements in Python?

2 Answers2