"/a" is not "/a" ?

[Gary Herron]

Emanuele D'Arrigo wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> while testing a module today I stumbled on something that I can work
> around but I don't quite understand. 
>   

*Do NOT use "is" to compare immutable types.*    **Ever! **

It is an implementation choice (usually driven by efficiency considerations) to choose when two strings with the same value are stored in memory once or twice.  In order for Python to recognize when a newly created string has the same value as an already existing string, and so use the already existing value, it would need to search *every* existing string whenever a new string is created.  Clearly that's not going to be efficient.  However, the C implementation of Python does a limited version of such a thing -- at least with strings of length 1.

Gary Herron

>   
>>>> a = "a"
>>>> b = "a"
>>>> a == b
>>>>         
> True
>   
>>>> a is b
>>>>         
> True
>
>   
>>>> c = "/a"
>>>> d = "/a"
>>>> c == d
>>>>         
> True               # all good so far
>   
>>>> c is d
>>>>         
> False             # eeeeek!
>
> Why c and d point to two different objects with an identical string
> content rather than the same object?
>
> Manu
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>