I have created the following code as part of an online exercise on codeacademy
print "Welcome to the English to Pig Latin translator!"
original = raw_input("what's you name?")
if original != "" and original.isalpha():
print original
else:
print "empty"
but then saw later on the course it swapped original != "" to using len(original) > 0
Are they the same as far the interpretter in python cares please?
In your concrete example, original != "" and len(original) > 0 will always give back the same results because we know original will always be a string. The latter variant will be a little slower, but you wouldn't notice.
But the whole condition is unnecessary in this context because
>>> "".isalpha()
False
Therefore, you'd get the same logic with
if original.isalpha():
print original
else:
print "empty"
However, the results would not be correct because
>>> "1".isalpha()
False
Better use something like
if original.isalpha():
print original
elif not original:
print "empty"
else:
print "not alpha"
