Conditional statements are fundamental constructs in programming that allow a program to make decisions based on certain conditions. The most common conditional statements are if, else, and elif.

An if statement evaluates a condition, and if that condition is true, the block of code within the if statement is executed. For example, if you want to check whether a number is positive, you use an if statement to test if the number is greater than zero.

If the condition in the if statement is not met, you can use an else statement to execute a different block of code. This provides an alternative path of execution. For instance, if the number is not greater than zero, the else block could handle cases where the number is zero or negative.

In more complex scenarios, you might need to test multiple conditions. This is where elif (short for “else if”) comes in handy. It allows you to check additional conditions if the initial if condition is false. You can chain multiple elif statements to handle various cases in a structured manner.