What Is Statement

Python Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟What Is Statement

This section provides a quick introduction of statement, which is the smallest unit of code that can be sent to the Python system to execute.

What Is Statement? A statement is a smallest unit of code that can be sent to the Python system to execute.

There are 2 groups of statements supported in Python: simple statements and compound statements.

1. What Is Simple Statement? A simple statement is a unit of executable code containing no sub-statements.

There are 4 basic rules on writing a simple statement:

Identify the statement type with a keyword.
End a statement with the end-of-line/end-of-file mark.
End a statement with semicolon ";"
Continue the statement to the next line by escaping the end-of-line mark with backslash "\"

Here are some examples of simple statements:

# assignment statement ended by the end-of-line mark
>>> x = 10

# 2 statements in 1 line
# ";" is used to end the first statement
>>> x = 20; del x

# 1 statement in 2 lines
# "\" is used to escape the end-of-line
# "..." is the Python prompt for pending statement
>>> x = \
... 30

2. What Is Compound Statement? A compound statement is a unit of executable code that contains sub-statements.

A compound statement is organized into one or more clauses. Each clause starts with clause header and is followed by a block of indented sub-statements.

clause_header:
  sub-statement
  sub-statement
  ...
clause_header:
  sub-statement
  sub-statement
  ...
...

For example, the "if" statement is a compound statement with multiple clauses.

if condition:
  sub-statement
  sub-statement
  ...
elif condition:
  sub-statement
  sub-statement
  ...
...
else:
  sub-statement
  sub-statement
  ...