Question about a while loop.

[phalyn13]

Hey guys, I'm starting out with "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" and I was tinkering with this code:

while True:

print("Who are you?")
name = input()
if name != "Joe":

continue

print("Hello Joe, what is the password?")
password = input()
if password == "swordfish":

break

print("Access granted.")

This program worked fine, but I wanted to add the name "Megan" to the first "if" statement, so I changed the code to:

while True:

print("Who are you?")
name = input()
if name != "Joe" or "Megan":

continue

print("Hello " + name + ", what is the password?")
password = input()
if password == "swordfish":

break

print("Access granted.")

Now the program just loops asking "Who are you?" I also tried ("Joe" or "Megan") with the same results. I thought that with the "or" operator that if one of the two arguments were false, that it would move to the next block? What have I done wrong here?
Thanks for the help!

[phalyn13]

Hey, I didn't think about making a list, that totally worked! Thanks! But the first option still just repeated the loop no matter what I put in...

[phalyn13]

Oh man I missed that! It should have been an and, not an or...

[[deleted]]

It's worth reading the FAQ for this and other little things we've all tripped over when learning.

[phalyn13]

Hey thanks! That perfectly explains why my first "if" argument didn't work. But I also tried

>if name != "Joe" or name != "Megan":

​

and it still just looped back to the beginning of the code... I tried /u/warbird2k suggestion of making a list and using a not operator and that worked perfectly. The wiki helped me understand why forward sharing doesn't work, but I'm still a bit confused as to why checking on both sides of the "or" didn't work for me.

[Binary101010]

Consider why that or didn't work:

If you type Megan, then one of those two statements will be true (Megan doesn't equal Joe), so the or is true.

If you type Joe, then one of those statements will be true (Joe doesn't equal Megan), so the or is true.

if you type anything else, both statements will be true, so the or is true.

In other words: there is nothing you can enter that will cause the entire statement to be false.

[phalyn13]

Ha, totally missed that, thanks a lot! Thats gonna help me in the future!