If function in python

We can easily define a if_function which seemingly does exactly what the if statement does. However, this is not the entire story.

 1 ## if_function is not the same as the built-in if statement
 2
 3 def if_function(cond, true_result, false_result):
 4     if cond:
 5         return true_result
 6     else:
 7         return false_result
 8
 9 flag = 0
10
11 def cond():
12     return flag
13
14 def true_statement():
15     global flag
16     flag += 1
17     return flag
18
19 def false_statement():
20     global flag
21     flag += 1
22     return flag
23
24 def using_if_statement():
25     if cond():
26         return true_statement()
27     else:
28         return false_statement()
29
30 def using_if_function():
31     return if_function(cond(), true_statement(), false_statement())
32
33 print using_if_statement()
34 print using_if_function()
35
36 ## Output
37 ## 1
38 ## 2