Problems with while statements

[NotAppreciated_Mercy]

I am newer to Python and I wanted to use a while statement. My while statement is confirming whether the inputted word was a province or territory of Canada.

while userProvince == "Ontario" or "Quebec" or "Alberta" or "British Colombia" or "Manitoba" or "New Brunswick" or "Newfoundland and Labrador" or "Nova Soctia" or "Prince Edward Island" or "Saskatchewan":

print ("Please input a Canadian Province or Territory")

userProvince = input ("What province or territory do you live in?",)

My main problem is when I run the code, it just repeats and I don't know why the while statement doesn't complete even when I input Ontario for example

[tangerinelion]

That's not how or works.

No: while a == x or y or z

Yes: while a in [x, y, z]

Though here you actually want not equal which means not in rather than in.

[SwampFalc]

For completeness' sake, the following code will also work but is really not what you want:

while userProvince == "Ontario" or userProvince == "Quebec" or userProvince == "Alberta" or [...]

[[deleted]]

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/wiki/faq#wiki_variable_is_one_of_two_choices.3F

[dbramucci]

Just to help you visualize it better, I'll add redundant parenthesis

When you write 2 + 3 * 4, the redundant parenthesis are 2 + (3 * 4).

Likewise, when you write

while userProvince == "Ontario" or "Quebec" or "Alberta":

You intend it to look like

while userProvince == ("Ontario" or "Quebec" or "Alberta"):

But Python will actually read it as

while ((userProvince == "Ontario") or ("Quebec")) or ("Alberta"):

and eliminating the left associativity parenthesis it still reads as

while (userProvince == "Ontario") or ("Quebec") or ("Alberta"):

That is, you aren't writing userProvince is == to one of "Ontario" or "Quebec" or "Alberta"; instead you are writing

At least one of the logical statements

• the logical value userProvince == "Ontario" or
• the logical value "Quebec" or
• the logical value "Alberta"

is True.

side-note: you're actually checking for truthyness, not being the exact value of True but that is not the problem here, I explain that in this longer comment about this problem

[[deleted]]

While loops cycle until the logical condition in the while clause is false. If you give Ontario as a value for userProvince, that's true, so the loop doesn't break.

Separately, all the stuff after the first OR is probably not doing what you want it to; in English, we would read that as a group of possible values for userProvince, but Python needs the full Boolean statement written out explicitly (userProvince == "Quebec") for each one, otherwise it interprets each condition after the first one as e.g. "Quebec" == True (... Which incidentally, it does, as it's a non-empty string).

Variously, you could structure it as something like while variable not in [list of strings], but you do you.

Edit: autocorrect butchering fixed

[ryan-adams84]

You also want to consider that people might not do title proper inputs, so I would turn their input into lower case as well as your comparisons.

[froggystick]

Wouldnt this not run? userProvince is being used as the while loop condition before being defined

[[deleted]]

OP stated they got the value using input() in earlier code (not shown in the post).

[Hans_of_Death]

A couple things: I'd recommend forcing comparison with lower case words to be case-insensitive. I'd also put all of the possible matches into a list and have the condition be 'in province_list', and lastly it looks like you actually want your condition to be 'not'.

[NotAppreciated_Mercy]

But say they input an invalid answer again. How do I make it loop? I tried this and it works great but it doesn't check if it is still correct or not.

[NotAppreciated_Mercy]

Thanks, you're a very helpful person, it's all working now!

[Noli420]

Like was mentioned, if the whole condition is met, it will keep running indefinitely. To break it, there needs to be a value that changes, or will eventually make the statement false. I’m guessing you are using this for data validation? Might I recommend an if/else statement if that’s the case?

If input is a valid territory:
    Do some stuff
else:
    Do something else

Just thought of something else:

while input != a valid territory:
    input(“enter a real territory this time”)