Explaining names vs variables in Python

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2016 08:49 am, Mark Lawrence wrote:

> On 02/03/2016 17:23, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> On Thu, 3 Mar 2016 01:11 am, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>>
>>> What is missing is the rules that are obeyed by the "is" operator.
>>
>> I think what is actually missing is some common bloody sense. The Python
>> docs are written in English, and don't define *hundreds*, possible
>> *thousands* of words because they are using their normal English meaning.
>>
>> The docs for `is` say:
>>
>> 6.10.3. Identity comparisons
>>
>> The operators is and is not test for object identity: x is y is true if
>> and only if x and y are the same object. x is not y yields the inverse
>> truth value.
>>
>> https://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#is-not
>>
>> In this case, "same object" carries the normal English meaning of "same"
>> and the normal computer science meaning of "object" in the sense of
>> "Object Oriented Programming". There's no mystery here, no circular
>> definition.
>>
> 
> Are we discussing UK (highly generalised), Geordie, Glaswegian, US,
> Canadian, South African, Australian, New Zealand, or some other form of
> English?

To the best of my knowledge, `is` has the same meaning in all variants of
English (although there are sometimes differences in grammatical form,
e.g. "this be that" versus "this is that"). It is a very old word, and such
old words tend to have astonishingly stable semantics and irregular
spelling.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/is#English
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/be#English



-- 
Steven