if statement syntax Matlab

I'm trying to translate some Matlab code into Python. Unfortunately I don't have Matlab so I can't try out the syntax.

I'm confused about an if statement below

for i = 1:200
    if mod(i,10) == 0 
        i 
    end

The for loop then carries on to calculate some values which depend on i. What does the if statement do?

Can I also ask what the difference between a sparse matrix and one made with zeros eg

A = sparse(n,m)
B = zeros(n,m)

Thanks!