Having both if() and for() statements in one liner

[Roy Smith]

In article <l19gdf$psh$1 at dont-email.me>,
 Ferrous Cranus <nikos.gr33k at gmail.com> wrote:

> o want to avoid having to type somehting like this:
> 
> if person="George":
> 	times in range(0, 5):
> 
> 
> Why it gives me an error when i'm trying to write it like this:
> 
> 
> if person="George" for times in range(0, 5):

Step One when reporting a problem is don't just tell us you got an 
error.  Tell us what the error is.  Cut and paste the exact text of the 
full error message.

Although, in this case, it's pretty easy to guess that it was a syntax 
error :-)

I'm not sure where to start.  First, the '=' in 'person="George"' should 
be '=='.  In Python, '=' is used for assignment, '==' is used for 
equality testing.

Next, if you want to use the 1-line version of 'if', you need a ':' 
after the condition.  Something like:

    if person == 'George': print 'foo'

but it's generally considered poor style to use 1-line if statements.  
Just write it on two lines:

    if person == 'George':
        print 'foo'

They just discovered a huge newline vein in Montana and they're mining 
the things like crazy.  There's no shortage of them so feel free to use 
as many as you like.  They even get recycled.

But, I'm not even sure you can put a 'for' statement as the body of a 
1-line 'if'.  I've never tried it before, and my one experiment now got 
me a syntax error.  Even if it turns out to be legal and I just haven't 
got the details right, it's just The Wrong Thing To Do.