[SOLVED] Beginner project with Python function not working as intended

Issue

I am a very new Python student and I want to make some personal projects to learn more effectively. My question is why won’t this function work as expected for me? I tried to keep it as simple as possible but clearly I am missing something. Thanks for any help with this!

# This program will tell whether
# the inputted month contains 31
# days.

def month_checker(month):
    if month == ['january','march','may','july','august','october']:
        print('Hey this month has 31 days!')


month_checker('may')

Solution

You are comparing a str with a list which is why your code isn’t working. Like @Guimoute mentioned you should check whether the month is in the list of months.

Or, if you want, you can use the expanded if-elif-else block which will be slightly more performant.

Solution 1:

def month_checker(month):
    if month in ['january','march','may','july','august','october']:
        print('Hey this month has 31 days!')


month_checker('may')

Solution 2:

def month_checker(month):
    if month == 'january' or month =='march' or month == 'may' or month == 'july' or month == 'august' or month =='october':
        print('Hey this month has 31 days!')


month_checker('may')

Answered By – kanuos

Answer Checked By – Senaida (BugsFixing Volunteer)