Question

I can’t seem to find a python way of saying

x = y or 1

In Perl:

$x = $y || 1;

Is there a nice way to do this in python?

Answer 1

Python’s or has what I believe are the semantics you’re looking for. See the documentation. It’s important to realize that it returns the input value(s), not True or False.

>>> "" or 12
12

>>> 27 or 9
27

>> None or "default"
'default'

This should mean that x = y or 1 should be what you’re after, x will be y if y is non-False, else it will be 1.