while loop - multiple condition

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 4:21 AM, Shiva
<shivaji_tn at yahoo.com.dmarc.invalid> wrote:
>> The loop will continue while either part is true - that's what "or"
>> means. Is that what you intended it to be doing?
>>
>> ChrisA
>>
>
>
> Yes......however, the second part of the or condition doesn't get evaluated.
> So if I enter a 'y' - I expect the second part to evaluate and the loop to
> break - but that doesn't seem to happen.

Break it down into separate parts and have a look at what's happening.

while ans.lower() != 'yes' or ans.lower()[0] != 'y':
    ans = input('Do you like python?')
    print("ans.lower() = {!r}; first cond = {!r}, second cond {!r},
disjunction {!r}".format(
        ans.lower(), (ans.lower() != 'yes'), (ans.lower()[0] != 'y'),
        (ans.lower() != 'yes' or ans.lower()[0] != 'y')
    ))

The while loop will continue so long as the disjunction is True. See
what it's actually doing.

This is fundamental Boolean logic, a basic skill of programming.
You're going to need to master this. Look at the different pieces, and
get your head around what the 'or' operator actually does.

ChrisA