Can a simple a==b 'hang' in and endless loop?

[Claudio Grondi]

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:25:38 +0100, Claudio Grondi
> <claudio.grondi at freenet.de> declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:
> 
> 
>>Any hints towards enlightenment what this from the geometry known term 
>>'ellipsis' mean in Python? Googling shows, that I am not the first who 
> 
> 
> 	Geometry: singular ellipse, plural ellipses -- sort of a flattened
> circle
> 	Punctuation: singular ellipsis -- a mark (typically three ...,
> typographically a single character "…") used to represent omitted text.
> For example, trimming the middle of a quote, such as:
> 	"Any hints towards ... term 'ellipsis' mean in Python?"
> 
> 	In the case of python, you would have to examine slice notation and
> some history...
> 
> 	Unless things have changed, nothing in the core Python language
> /uses/ the ellipsis in slicing. It was added, apparently, for use in
> numerical extension modules where the ellipsis represent
> missing/unspecified array indices in an extended slice.

As shown just above in this thread the code:
 >>> a = [1]
 >>> a.append(a)
 >>> a
[1, [...]]
uses it, so it seems, that things have changed.

Claudio