Conditional statements

A program statement that causes a jump of control from one part of the program to another is called control structure or control statement. As you have already learnt in C++, these control statements are compound statements used to alter the control fl ow of the process or program depending on the state of the process.

There are three important control structures

Sequential Statement

A sequential statement is composed of a sequence of statements which are executed one after another. A code to print your name, address and phone number is an example of sequential statement.

Example:

# Program to print your name and address - example for sequential statement
print ("Hello! This is Shyam")
print ("43, Second Lane, North Car Street, TN")
Output
Hello! This is Shyam
43, Second Lane, North Car Street, TN

Alternative or Branching Statement

In our day-to-day life we need to take various decisions and choose an alternate path to achieve our goal. May be we would have taken an alternate route to reach our destination when we find the usual road by which we travel is blocked. This type of decision making is what we are to learn through alternative or branching statement. Checking whether the given number is positive or negative, even or odd can all be done using alternative or branching statement.

Python provides the following types of alternative or branching statements:

Simple if statement • if..else statement • if..elif statement