In the last post introducing Python, I demonstrated how to make a simple app using variables and conditional statements. In order to do anything really powerful in a given programming language though, ...

Python, for all its power and popularity, has long lacked a form of flow control found in other languages—a way to take a value and match it elegantly against one of a number of possible conditions.

This Q&A is part of a weekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 100+ Q&A sites. Is ...