Stackoverflow question: Is there a built-in identity function in Python?

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 7:25 AM, Ned Batchelder <ned at nedbatchelder.com> wrote:
> On 12/7/17 2:41 PM, Ethan Furman wrote:
>>
>> On 12/07/2017 11:23 AM, Ned Batchelder wrote:
>>>
>>> On 12/7/17 1:28 PM, Ethan Furman wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> --> identity('spam', 'eggs', 7)
>>>> ('spam', 'eggs', 7)
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't see why this last case should hold.  Why does the function take
>>> more than one argument?  And if it does, then
>>> why doesn't it work like this?
>>>
>>>      --> identity('spam')
>>>      ('spam',)
>>>
>>> (because then it wouldn't be an identity function!)  Trying to handle the
>>> multi-argument case seems like it adds an
>>> unneeded special case to the function.
>>
>>
>> --> a = 'spam'
>> --> a == neds_identity(a)
>> False
>>
>
> Right, but why does one argument return the argument, but n>1 returns a
> tuple of the args?
>

Because it's impossible to return multiple values. IMO the "identity
function" is defined only in terms of one single argument, so all of
this is meaningless.

ChrisA