[issue6970] Redundant calls made to comparison methods.

[Mark Dickinson]

New submission from Mark Dickinson <dickinsm at gmail.com>:

Here's some strange behaviour in py3k:

newton:py3k dickinsm$ ./python.exe
Python 3.2a0 (py3k:75015, Sep 22 2009, 16:25:12) 
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5493)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> class A:
...     def __eq__(self, other):
...         print("In A.__eq__", self, other)
...         return NotImplemented
... 
>>> class B:
...     def __eq__(self, other):
...         print("In B.__eq__", self, other)
...         return NotImplemented
... 
>>> A() == B()
In A.__eq__ <__main__.A object at 0x34d030> <__main__.B object at 0x448210>
In B.__eq__ <__main__.B object at 0x448210> <__main__.A object at 0x34d030>
In B.__eq__ <__main__.B object at 0x448210> <__main__.A object at 0x34d030>
In A.__eq__ <__main__.A object at 0x34d030> <__main__.B object at 0x448210>
False

I'd expect to see only one call to A.__eq__ and one call to B.__eq__.

The cause seems to be that:

 - slot_tp_richcompare (in typeobject.c) makes two calls to half_richcompare,
   one with the original arguments and one with reverse arguments, *and*

 - do_richcompare (in object.c) also makes two calls to the tp_richcompare
   slot; again, one with the original arguments and one with the reversed
   arguments.

I tried removing the second block of slot_tp_richcompare (still in py3k);  
make and make test succeeded without any problems.  Removing this block does 
change behaviour though, so probably should not happen until 3.2, given that 
no-one appears to have reported the current behaviour actually causing any 
problems.

The duplicate calls also exist in 2.x;  figuring out a solution there (and 
being sure that the solution does the right thing) looks complicated, thanks 
to all the rich-compare/three-way-compare interactions.

----------
components: Interpreter Core
messages: 93000
nosy: mark.dickinson
severity: normal
stage: needs patch
status: open
title: Redundant calls made to comparison methods.
type: behavior
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.2

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue6970>
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