In fact, nearly 20 years ago PEP 308 ("Conditional Expressions") was made so people wouldn't need to resort to this sort of syntax - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0308/ .
> In many cases you can mimic a ? b : c with a and b or c, but there’s a flaw: if b is zero (or empty, or None – anything that tests false) then c will be selected instead. In many cases you can prove by looking at the code that this can’t happen (e.g. because b is a constant or has a type that can never be false), but in general this can be a problem.
> Tim Peters (who wishes it was Steve Majewski) suggested the following solution: (a and [b] or [c])[0].
In fact, nearly 20 years ago PEP 308 ("Conditional Expressions") was made so people wouldn't need to resort to this sort of syntax - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0308/ .
Quoting from the Python FAQ from 2.6 at https://web.archive.org/web/20151030070641if_/https://docs.p... :
> In many cases you can mimic a ? b : c with a and b or c, but there’s a flaw: if b is zero (or empty, or None – anything that tests false) then c will be selected instead. In many cases you can prove by looking at the code that this can’t happen (e.g. because b is a constant or has a type that can never be false), but in general this can be a problem.
> Tim Peters (who wishes it was Steve Majewski) suggested the following solution: (a and [b] or [c])[0].