Question

Assume something like this:

if mylist[0] == 1 or mylist[12] == 2:
   # do something

But I’m not sure if mylist[12] will always not be out of range. What do to keep things simple and still check if index exists? Wouldn’t want to do

if mylist[0] == 1:
    # do something
elif mylist[12] == 2:
    # do the EXACT same thing

As you get too much identical lines of code.

Answer 1

You could check the length of the list:

if mylist[0] == 1 or (len(mylist) > 12 and mylist[12] == 2):

This uses the short-circuting behaviour of and to ensure that mylist[12] won’t be evaluated if the list has 12 items or fewer.