title: Most pythonic way of approaching a multiple conditionals function
body: <p>Maybe it is just me, but I seem to come across this problem on almost a daily basis. I've heard in many places that function should be compact and easy to read. </p>
  
  <p>I often have a scenario where I have multiple conditionals which all return different values. Something like.</p>
  
  <pre><code>def conditionals():
      if something1:
          return item1
      if something2:
          return item2
      if something3:
          return item3
           ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>With a lot more conditionals, the function is not compact and certainly not readable. The only way I found to make this better is to make a function specific to each item to return. But then in my code, I feel like I have so many functions for nothing. Anyway, what is the best way to solve this?</p>