A Tale of Two ifs

Before we delve into the details of any of the concrete statements in Table 10-1, I want to begin our look at Python statement syntax by showing you what you are not going to type in Python code so you can compare and contrast it with other syntax models you might have seen in the past.

Consider the following if statement, coded in a C-like language:

if (x > y) {
    x = 1;
    y = 2;
}

This might be a statement in C, C++, Java, JavaScript, or Perl. Now, look at the equivalent statement in the Python language:

if x > y:
    x = 1
    y = 2

The first thing that may pop out at you is that the equivalent Python statement is less, well, cluttered—that is, there are fewer syntactic components. This is by design; as a scripting language, one of Python’s goals is to make programmers’ lives easier by requiring less typing.