Statements vs Expressions

So far you have already seen examples of both statements and expressions and your Python programs will be made up of both of these.

We will give a basic definition of the two, however, the real story is much more complicated.

1. Statements

Statements instruct Python to do something, that is the Python interpreter can execute the statement. To date, you have seen two types of statements: print and assignment.

For example,

print("Hello World!")

is a statement that instructs python to print the string "Hello World!" and,

int1 = 1

is a statement that instructs Python to assign 1 to the variable int1.

2. Expressions

Expressions differ from statements in that they evaluate to an object. They are a combination of objects and operators.

For example,

3 + 5 

combines the integers (objects of type int) 3 and 5 with the operator + and evaluates to the integer 8.

This example,

True and False

combines the boolean (objects of type bool) True and False with the logical operator and and evaluates to the boolean False.

3. Combining Statements and Expressions

Most of your code will tend to be a statement made up of expressions.

For example, you can assign the result of an expression to a variable. Consider the following statement (assignment)

a = 3 + 5 

Here 3 + 5 is an expression and the result, 8, is assigned to the variable a. The whole line is a statement that contains an expression.

=== TASK ===

A nice simple one.

Create a new Python file.

Print Statements instruct Python to do something

Print Expressions combine objects and operators and evaluate to an object

Print Statements can include expressions