Pythonic way to avoid "if x: return x" statements

user_5754160 0
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I have a method that calls 4 other methods in sequence to check for specific conditions, and returns immediately (not checking the following ones) whenever one returns something Truthy.

def check_all_conditions():
    x = check_size()
    if x:
        return x

    x = check_color()
    if x:
        return x

    x = check_tone()
    if x:
        return x

    x = check_flavor()
    if x:
        return x
    return None

This seems like a lot of baggage code. Instead of each 2-line if statement, I'd rather do something like:

x and return x

But that is invalid Python. Am I missing a simple, elegant solution here? Incidentally, in this situation, those four check methods may be expensive, so I do not want to call them multiple times.

if-statement python
18 Answers

Or use max:

def check_all_conditions():
    return max(check_size(), check_color(), check_tone(), check_flavor()) or None
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