C++ programmer confused about why Python isn't working the way I intend

[deanhystad]

A or B does not return True or False. A or B returns A if bool(A) is True else it returns B. It doesn't even look at the value of B.

bool(object) is True for most objects. bool(object) is False for False, 0, None, empty list, empty tuple, empty dictionary, empty set and blank string.

(0 or 5) == 5
(1 or 5) == 1
([] or None) == None
(None or []) == []
(0 or None or False or []) == []

Evaluation of the last example.
(0 or (None or (False or []))) == (None or (False or [])) because bool(0) is False.
(None or (False or [])) == (False or []) because bool(None) is False.
(False or []) == [] because bool(False) is False.

Your code was testing if player == "a".
("a" or "b" or "c" or "d") == "a" because bool("a") is True.

"and" works similarly. A and B returns A if bool(A) is False, else it returns B. It doesn't even look at the value of B.

(0 and 5) == 0
(1 and 5) == 5
([] and None) == []
(None and []) == None
(0 and None and False and []) == 0

You probably want to use in().

    if player not in ("a", "b", "c", "d"):
        print('whatever')
    else:
        break

This reads better than the equivalent:

    if not (player=="a" or player=="b" or player=="c" or player=="d"):
        print('whatever')
    else:
        break

Oh, before I forget, your C++ code won't work either. The compiler would complain that you cannot do string || string.