😖Logical Operators, Seemingly Illogical Behavior

?!?!

And now an example that contains both and and or:

>>> 1 or 0 and 1/0 or 2

And this statement gets tricky to comprehend! Here's the core idea: the and operator takes precedence over the or operator.

In simpler English, what this means is that the statement looks something like this:

>>> 1 or (0 and 1/0) or 2

This statement first evaluates 1, finds it to be a truthy value, and immediately returns it. This is why the 1/0 doesn't throw an error.

Try this one yourself:

>>> 0 or None and 1/0 or 2

Now that you've given this a shot, let's walk through it together!

>>> 0 or None and 1/0 or 2
>>> 0 or (None and 1/0) or 2

First, the or statement evaluates 0. Finding it to be a false-y value, it keeps going. It evaluates (None and 1/0) next. In this, the and finds None to be the first false-y value, and immediately returns it. The outer or statements sees None as the next value, and keeps going. It therefore returns 2, the first truth-y value it finds!