palindrome function

[Denis Kasak]

On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 12:22 AM, kdt <dorjetarap at googlemail.com> wrote:
 > Hi all,
 >
 > Can someone please explain to me why the following evaluates as false?
 >
 >>>>list=['a','n','n','a']
 >>>>list==list.reverse()
 >>>>False
 >
 > I'm stumped :s

Read the documentation on list.reverse().

Basically, it reverses the list in place, so it modifies the list which 
called it. It does not return a /new/ list which is a reversed version 
of the original, as you expected it to. Since it doesn't return anything 
explicitly, Python makes it return None. Hence, the comparison you are 
doing is between the original list and a None, which is False, naturally.
Try this:

spam = ['a', 'n', 'n', 'a']
eggs = spam[:]
if spam.reverse() == eggs:
    print "Palindrome"

Also, 'list' is a really bad name for a list, since this is the name of 
the builtin type object for the list type.

-- 
Denis Kasak