Python All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 2

Controlling the Action

IN THIS CHAPTER

Making decisions with if

Repeating a process with for

Looping with while

Protecting your users from errors

Understanding contextual coding

So far in this book we've talked a lot about storing information in computers, mostly in variables that Python and your computer can work with. Having the information there in a form that the computer can work with is certainly critical to getting a computer to do anything. Think of this as the “having” part — having some information with which to work. But now we need to turn our attention to the “doing” part … actually working with that information to create something useful or entertaining. In this chapter, we cover the most important and the most commonly used operations for making the computer do stuff. We start with something that computers do well, do quickly, and do a lot — make decisions.

Main Operators for Controlling the Action

You control what your program (and the computer) does by ...