How to "else" in a list comprehension when the condition is non-boolean? [duplicate]

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• The `if statement ` in list comprehesion of python 2 answers

Given a list e.g.

a = ["No", 1, "No"]

I want to convert this to a new list (or actually just re-assign the list) such that each "No" gets converted to a 0 e.g.

[0,1,0]

If I try the following list comprehension:

[0 for i in a if i =="No"]

This obviously results in a list that omits every element that is not "No"

[0,0]

If I follow the lead given here and try:

[0 if "No" else i for i in a]

This gives me:

[0, 0, 0]

And I guess this is because "No" equates to True.

What am I misunderstanding about the usage of if/else in a list comprehension?