4.9. Glossary¶

block

A group of consecutive statements with the same indentation.

body

The block of statements in a compound statement that follows the header.

boolean expression

An expression that is either true or false.

boolean function

A function that returns a boolean value. The only possible values of the bool type are False and True.

boolean value

There are exactly two boolean values: True and False. Boolean values result when a boolean expression is evaluated by the Python interepreter. They have type bool.

branch

One of the possible paths of the flow of execution determined by conditional execution.

chained conditional

A conditional branch with more than two possible flows of execution. In Python chained conditionals are written with if ... elif ... else statements.

comparison operator

One of the operators that compares two values: ==, !=, >, <, >=, and <=.

condition

The boolean expression in a conditional statement that determines which branch is executed.

conditional statement

A statement that controls the flow of execution depending on some condition. In Python the keywords if, elif, and else are used for conditional statements.

logical operator

One of the operators that combines boolean expressions: and, or, and not.

modulus operator

An operator, denoted with a percent sign ( %), that works on integers and yields the remainder when one number is divided by another.

nesting

One program structure within another, such as a conditional statement inside a branch of another conditional statement.