comparison with None

[Alex Martelli]

Tommy Grav <tgrav at mac.com> wrote:

> On Apr 19, 2007, at 11:00 PM, Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> > Alan Isaac <aisaac at american.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> currently documented behavior:
> >> "objects of different types always compare unequal".
> >
> > Where is that documented?  URL please?
> >
> >>>> 1.0 == 1
> > True
> >>>> type(1.0), type(1)
> > (<type 'float'>, <type 'int'>)
> >
> 
> Isn't this an example of numerical comparison (= or !=) versus
> object comparison (is or is not). I think the documentation needs
> to state that there is a difference between the two types.

Operator == (TWO equal signs, not just one: that would be an assignment
instead) can be applied to arbitrary objects, not just numbers, just
like operator 'is'.

>>> u'ciao' == 'ciao'
True
>>> type(u'ciao'), type('ciao')
(<type 'unicode'>, <type 'str'>)

See, it's not a question of numbers versus other things: the
distinction, rather, is between comparison of the values of objects
(which can perfectly well be equal even for objects of different types)
versus checking object identity (and since an object only has one type
at a time, it can't be "the same object" as one with a different type).
Why do you think the Python docs don't draw the difference between '=='
(equality) and 'is' (identity)?

I'm still interested to know where that erroneous quote from Alan Isaac
comes from, because if it's in Python's docs, it can be fixed.


Alex