Difference between 'is' and '=='

[Ross Ridge]

Felipe Almeida Lessa wrote:
> That said, you can do thinks like:
> >>> import socket
> >>> a = socket.AF_UNIX
> >>> a is socket.AF_UNIX
> True
>
> That kind of constants can be used with "is". But if don't want to be
> prone to errors as I do, use "is" only when you really know for sure
> that you're dealing with singletons.

It's only safe to to compare address family values with socket.AF_UNIX
using "is", if small integers are guaranteed to be singletons, and
socket.AF_UNIX has one of those small values.  Otherwise, address
family values equal in value to socket.AF_UNIX can be generated using
different objects.  There's no requirement that the socket module or
anything else return values using the same object that the
socket.AF_UNIX constant uses.

Consider this example using the socket.IPPROTO_RAW constant:

>>> socket.getaddrinfo("localhost", None, socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_RAW, socket.IPPROTO_RAW)[0][2] is socket.IPPROTO_RAW
False

>>> socket.getaddrinfo("localhost", None, socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_RAW, socket.IPPROTO_RAW)[0][2] == socket.IPPROTO_RAW
True

                                Ross Ridge