How to assign a variable in an IF condition, and then return it?

Question

def isBig(x):
   if x > 4: 
       return \'apple\'
   else: 
       return \'orange\'

This works:

if isBig(y): return isBig(y)
         


        

Answer 1

The problem is that the assignment operation cannot be evaluated as having a boolean value. The if statement relies on being able to evaluate a boolean. For example,

>>> fruit = 'apple'
>>> bool(fruit = 'apple')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)

/Users/jem/ in ()

TypeError: 'fruit' is an invalid keyword argument for this function
>>> bool('a')
True