comparison with None

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:19:26 -0700, Steven Howe wrote:

> I've read and found that 'None' comparisons is not always a good idea.

You're probably thinking of testing against None with equality:

if x == None: do_something()

That can go wrong if x is a class that has an overly-broad concept of
equality, e.g.:

class FalseKlass:
    def __eq__(self, other):
        # equal to anything that is False
        return not other


> Better to:
> from types import NoneType
> 
> x = None
> if type( x ) == NoneType:
>     # true
>     < code >
> else:
>     # false; do something else.
>     < more code >


Not necessary. Since None is a guaranteed singleton, the only test you
need to make is "if x is None: ...".

But if you wanted to do extra work unnecessarily, a less unnecessary
amount of extra work would be:

if type(x) == type(None): ...

You don't need to look up the type of None in the types module when you
can easily get it from the type() function.



-- 
Steven.