Python "is" behavior

[George Sakkis]

On Jun 20, 12:45 pm, michalis.avr... at gmail.com wrote:
> On Jun 20, 9:42 am, George Sakkis <george.sak... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jun 20, 12:31 pm, michalis.avr... at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > I am not certain why this is the case, but...
>
> > > >>> a = 256
> > > >>> b = 256
> > > >>> a is b
>
> > > True
>
> > > >>> a = 257
> > > >>> b = 257
> > > >>> a is b
>
> > > False
>
> > > Can anyone explain this further? Why does it happen? 8-bit integer
> > > differences?
>
> > No, implementation-dependent optimization (caching). For all we know,
> > the next python version may cache up to 1024 or it may turn off
> > caching completely; do not rely on it. More generally, do not use 'is'
> > when you really mean '=='.
>
> > George
>
> Thank you George. I am very curious about some of these internal
> Python things that I keep stumbling upon through friends. And thank
> you for all the help!

As far it's plain curiosity it's ok, but it's a small implementation
detail you shouldn't rely on. There's nothing magic about 256, just
the size decided for 2.5. If you tried it on 2.4 you'd get:

Python 2.4.2 (#1, Mar  8 2006, 13:24:00)
[GCC 3.4.4 20050721 (Red Hat 3.4.4-2)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> a=99
>>> b=99
>>> a is b
True
>>> a=100
>>> b=100
>>> a is b
False

I was more surprised by the following:

Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, May  8 2007, 14:46:30)
[GCC 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-3)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> a= 123456; b=123456; a is b
True

For some reason, stacking multiple statements reuses the same object.

George