Can global variable be passed into Python function?

[Michael Torrie]

On 02/28/2014 01:46 AM, Ben Finney wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> writes:
> 
>> On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 09:43:58 +0200, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>>>    class Connection:
>>>        IDLE = "IDLE"
>> [...]
>>>        CONNECTED = "CONNECTED"
>> [...]
>>>        def disconnect(self):
>>>            ...
>>>            if self.state is CONNECTED:
>>>                ...
>>
>> Why do you care that the state is *that specific* string, rather than
>> any old string with the value "CONNECTED"?
> 
> I can think of a reason:
> 
> * When you publish the API for the ‘Connection’ class,
> 
> * and another party writes code that sets ‘state’ to a string with the
>   value ‘"CONNECTED"’,
> 
> * and you implemented the check as ‘self.state == "CONNECTED"’,
> 
> * and their code works with your class and it goes into production,
> 
> * you're then not able to change the expected value without breaking
>   that party's code.

Sure.  If he replaced the line if self.state is CONNECTED with if
self.state == self.CONNECTED then he is free to change CONNECTED at any
time.  So yes, "is" is not necessary here.  Equality checking works fine.