[FIXED] How replace all these "if...elif...else" statements with something more concise?

Issue

Is there a way to reduce the amount of elif things in my statement? In another question I asked someone said that my code suffered from redundancy and it definitely does. I'm relatively new to python and coding in general and when I look things up it's always kind of hard to understand.

This is the block of code I'm talking about:

(If needed I can post the rest of the code)

if (random_mon_name.lower()=='normal'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_NORMAL)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='fire'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_FIRE)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='water'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_WATER)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='grass'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_GRASS)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='electric'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_ELECTRIC)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='ice'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_ICE)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='fighting'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_FIGHTING)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='poison'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_POISON)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='ground'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_GROUND)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='flying'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_FLYING)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='psychic'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_PSYCHIC)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='bug'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_BUG)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='ghost'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_GHOST)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='rock'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_ROCK)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='dark'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_DARK)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='dragon'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_DRAGON)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='steel'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_STEEL)
    break
elif (random_mon_name.lower()=='fairy'):
    rangen_mon_name = random.choice(mon_name_type_FAIRY)
    break
else:
    print("You didn't actually enter a type.\nTry Again.")

Solution

The root cause of there being so much redundancy in this code is the huge number of variables you have to manage.

Whenever you have a bunch of individual variables that all hold the same kind of data, like mon_name_type_FIRE and mon_name_type_WATER (I assume these are lists of names associated with that attack type), it's a strong clue that you should instead put them into a collection, like a dictionary, or a list. Not only does this reduce the number of variables to keep track of in your code, it makes it possible to access those values dynamically rather than with a ton of copy+pasted code.

For example, if you took all your different mons and put them in a dict that's keyed by their attack type, instead of creating all the mon_name_type_WHATEVER variables:

mon_by_type = {
    "fire": ["charmander", "charmeleon", "charizard"],
    "water": ["squirtle", "wartortle", "blastoise"],
    # etc
}

you can now replace your giant if/elif chain with a single dictionary lookup:

try:
    random_mon = random.choice(mon_by_type[random_mon_name.lower()])
except KeyError:
    print("You didn't actually enter a type.  Try again.")

Answered By - Samwise