[Python-Dev] Rich comparison confusion

Christian Tismer tismer@tismer.com
Thu, 18 Jan 2001 22:39:18 +0100


Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> > I'm a bit confused about Guido's rich comparison stuff.  In the description
> > he states that __le__ and __ge__ are inverses as are __lt__ and __gt__.
> 
> Yes.  By this I mean that A<B and B>A are interchangeable, ditto for
> A<=B and B>=A.  Also A==B interchanges for B==A, and A!=B for B!=A.

...

> I think what threw you off was the ambiguity of "inverse".  This means
> Boolean negation.  I'm not relying on Boolean negation here -- I'm
> relying on the more fundamental property that a<b and b>a have the
> same outcome.

Yes, the "inverse" is confusing. Is what you mean the "reverse" ?
Like the other right-side operators __radd__, is it correct to
think of

   __ge__  == __rle__

if __rle__ was written in the same fashion like __radd__ ?
It looks semantically the same, although the reason for a
call might be different.

And if my above view is right, would it perhaps be less
confusing to use in fact __rle__ and __rlt__,
or woudl it be more confusing, since __rlt__ would also be
invoked left-to-right, implementing ">".

Not shure if I added even more confusion.

-- 
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