The conditional statement (if..then.else) is Programming 101 and used in almost any useful chunk of code out there. But, they can certainly add to "code-clutter" when used in the most basic circumstances. Take, for example, the following logic:
if item1 != '':
print item1
elif item2 != '':
print item2
elif item3 != '':
print item3
Pretty basic, right? The example above is written using Python syntax. Although, Python offers an exceedingly simpler approach to the exact same result:
print (item1 or item2 or item3)
item1 is checked for boolean True, which Python defines as not False, not an empty string and not None. If it cannot reach a True value, it'll move on to item2. It's worthwhile to explore your favorite scripting languages documentation to see if a similar syntax is valid. Believe me, it's a time saver!