Why using an equality with a list doesn't work?

Question

I tried for the last hour to do a basic thing with list, but it doesn't work, and I can't find out why

x = -5000
code = (str("{:07.0f}".format(abs(x)))
if code[3] == 5:
    print("1")
else:
    print("2")

When I run this, the value in code is 0005000. If I do print(code_background_x[3]) , the output will be 5, but when I. run the program, the output is 2. What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

You forgot to enclose the 5 in quotes.

This works for me:

x = -5000
code = str("{:07.0f}".format(abs(x)))
if code[3] == "5":
    print("1")
else:
    print("2")

Prints: 1

Answer 2

You are comparing a str type object with int . It's apparent that types of both are not same. Probably you will wish to compare with '5'

x = -5000
code = (str("{:07.0f}".format(abs(x))))


if code[3] == 5:
    print("1")
else:
    print("2")

print(type(code[3]))
print(type(5))

Answer 3

code[3] is "5" , not 5 . Type of "5" is str while type of 5 is int . You can use builtin type function for getting type of any object, which is good for debugging.

x = -5000
code = str("{:07.0f}".format(abs(x)))
print(type(code[3])) # <class 'str'>
print("5" == 5) # False

You can also use repr for debugging when you encounter this type of problems. It returns printable representation of an object.

x = -5000
code = str("{:07.0f}".format(abs(x)))
print("5") # 5
print(5) # 5

print(repr("5")) # '5'
print(repr(5)) # 5

So this works:

x = -5000
code = str("{:07.0f}".format(abs(x)))
if code[3] == '5':
    print("1")
else:
    print("2")