Why should I need an else statement to use an if statement?

You said you missed two things in Python:

> Oh and how I miss one line if statements and conditional assignment when I'm in Python.

derac provided an example exercising both. To separate them:

One line if statements:

  if predicate: expression

Conditional assignment:

  a = 1 if predicate else 0

The else is to permit the conditional assignment, it's a ternary operation, it is not for the if statement.

Well, sorta. In practice people don't use one line statements and it's considered unpythonic. So much so I forgot it was even possible, so you're right, I was wrong. Black converts it to a multiline statement. Also, the Ruby syntax for them is better because it makes it clear it isn't a mistake.

     launch_nuclear_weapons if at_total_war

Just reads better because it doesn't look like a mistaken if statement.

By conditional assignment, I meant more something like this:

    some_var ||= 45

And I know I can do either:

    some_var = some_var or 45
    some_var = some_var if some_var else 45

But it just looks stupid and it is such a frequent need due to the way default args work for things like dicts, that it gets annoying.

check out defaultdict :D

https://docs.python.org/3/library/collections.html

> a = 1 if True else 0