Why can i use a short version of the code here?

1sp34k2r0b0ts · February 19, 2022, 6:01pm

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In the exercise five of “Cleaning and Preparing Data in Python” there is the following instruction:

Use an if statement to check if the value is an empty string. If the value is an empty string, give it the value "Gender Unknown/Other".

So i create the following code (which is correct, but…):

for row in moma:
    gender = row[5]
    gender = gender.title()
    if gender == "":
        gender = "Gender Unknown/Other"
    row[5] = gender

(…) in the solution code, there is only an “If not…” Statement.
Why can i use this short code?

for row in moma:
    # fix the capitalization and missing
    # values for the gender column
    gender = row[5]
    gender = gender.title()
    if not gender:
        gender = "Gender Unknown/Other"
    row[5] = gender

otavios.s · February 19, 2022, 7:03pm

Hello @1sp34k2r0b0ts ,

The if not syntax is used to test boolean values. For example, let’s say you have a boolean variable called boolean and you want an if statement to check if it’s True or False:

boolean = True
if boolean:
    print('This is True')

Output:

‘This is True’

or…

boolean = False
if not boolean:
    print('This is False')

Output:

‘This is False’

With that said, empty strings along with other empty python objects are considered to be False, and that’s why you can use this syntax.