What is up with "=="?

[Erik Max Francis]

Quentin Crain wrote:

> 1  Whos __eq__ or __cmp__ is being called: String's or
> Int's?
> 2  Why IS comparison supported across types?
> 3  The exception + gives makes it sound like there is
> a built-in function + that does not like taking an
> 'int' and a 'string'. Read this way, the built-in ==
> does accept 'int' and 'string'.

It's really a judgement call.  It's certainly possible to set up an
equality operator which respects type, but in a dynamic language like
Python, you'll often find yourself comparing objects of different types
for equality.  This can get inconvenient, since this means that this
comparisons would raise TypeErrors when all you really care about is
whether or not they're equal or not.  Two objects of different types are
obviously unequal (unless __eq__ is deliberately overridden, etc.,
etc.), so it makes sense to simply have == and != not raise TypeErrors.

In fact, it's so common, that if your standard equality operator _does_
raise TypeErrors, you're almost guaranteeing you need another builtin
equality operator which does _not_ respect type.  So now you have two
equality operators, which can be confusing -- there's
test-equality-and-raise-if-the-types-are-different and
test-equality-and-treat-different-types-as-simply-unequal.  This isn't
necessarily the end of the world, but it's inconvenient.  (For the
record, I used this approach -- two equality operators, `eq' and `seq'
-- so I'm not opposed to it on general principle.)

Plus the dynamicism of Python itself enters into it.  I can easily come
up with custom classes, whether actually derived from numeric types or
not, which I _do_ want to test equal to existing types.  Now it's
looking much more like it would be advantageous for equality to simply
not raise an error on different types and just say, "Nope, they're not
equal."

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