Annoying behaviour of the != operator

[Greg Ewing]

Rocco Moretti wrote:

> The main problem is that Python is trying to stick at least three 
> different concepts onto the same set of operators: equivalence (are 
> these two objects the same?), ordering (in a sorted list, which comes 
> first?), and mathematical "size".

A possible compromise would be to add a new special method,
such as __equal__, for use by == and != when there is no
__eq__ or __ne__. Then there would be three clearly separated
levels of comparison: (1) __cmp__ for ordering, (2) __equal__
for equivalence, (3) __eq__ etc. for unrestricted semantics.

 > This gives the wacky world where
> "[(1,2), (3,4)].sort()" works, whereas "[1+2j, 3+4j].sort()" doesn't.

To solve that, I would suggest a fourth category of "arbitrary
ordering", but that's probably Py3k material.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,	
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg