What sorts of methods exist for prematurely exiting an if clause?
There are times when I\'m writing code and want to put a break statement
Effectively what you're describing are goto statements, which are generally panned pretty heavily. Your second example is far easier to understand.
However, cleaner still would be:
if some_condition:
...
if condition_a:
your_function1()
else:
your_function2()
...
def your_function2():
if condition_b:
# do something
# and then exit the outer if block
else:
# more code here