What does “variable or 0” mean in python?

Question

What is the meaning of the following statement in python:

x = variable_1 or 0

variable_1 is an object. What value does x

Answer 1

x = variable_1 or 0

It means that if variable_1 evaluates to False (i.e. it is considered "empty" - see documentation for magic method __nonzero__), then 0 is assigned to x.

>>> variable_1 = 'foo'
>>> variable_1 or 0
'foo'
>>> variable_1 = ''
>>> variable_1 or 0
0

It is equivalent to "if variable_1 is set to anything non-empty, then use its value, otherwise use 0".

Type of x is either type of variable_1 or int (because 0 is int).