using the if statement in an application it' possible to use the if statement in number of ways in python howeveryou immediately need to know about three common ways to use ituse single condition to execute single statement when the condition is true use single condition to execute multiple statements when the condition is true combine multiple conditions into single decision and execute one or more statements when the combined condition is true the following sections explore these three possibilities and provide you with examples of their use you see additional examples of how to use the if statement throughout the book because it' such an important method of making decisions working with relational operators relational operator determines how value on the left side of an expression compares to the value on the right side of an expression after it makes the determinationit outputs value of true or false that reflects the truth value of the expression for example = is truewhile = is false table - contains listing of the relational operators the following steps show how to create and use an if statement this example also appears with the downloadable source code as simpleif py open python shell window you see the familiar python prompt type testme and press enter this step assigns value of to testme notice that it uses the assignment operator and not the equality operator type if testme = and press enter this step creates an if statement that tests the value of testme using the equality operator you should notice two features of the python shell at this pointthe word if is highlighted in different color than the rest of the statement the next line is automatically indented