python tip

Try to leave a function as soon as you know it can do no more meaningful work. Doing this reduces the indentation of your program and makes it more readable. It also allows you to avoid nested if statements.

if positive_case:
  if particular_example: 
    do_something
else:
  raise exception

You can test the input in a few ways before carrying out your actions. Another approach is to raise the exception early and to carry out the main action in the else part of the loop.

if not positive_case:
  raise exception
if not particular_example:
  raise exception
do_something 

Now you can see what this block of code is trying to achieve at first glance. You don’t need to follow the chain of logic in the conditionals. Also, you can clearly see when this function would raise an exception.