[Python-ideas] Non-boolean return from __contains__

[Guido van Rossum]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Mathias Panzenböck
<grosser.meister.morti at gmx.net> wrote:
> On 07/26/2010 04:20 AM, Alex Gaynor wrote:
>>
>> Fundamentally the argument in favor of it is the same as for the other
>> comparison operators: you want to do symbolic manipulation using the
>> "normal" syntax, as a DSL.  My example is that of a SQL expression
>> builder: SQLAlchemy uses User.id == 3 to create a clause where the ID
>> is 3, but for "id in [1, 2, 3]" it has: User.id.in_([1, 2, 3]), which
>> is rather unseamly IMO (at least as much as having User.id.eq(3) would
>> be).
>>
>
> This is a bad example for your wish because this code:
>>>> id in [1, 2, 3]
>
> translates into:
>>>> [1, 2, 3].__contains__(id)
>
> So it doesn't help that 'in' may return something else than a bool
> because the method is called on the wrong object for your purposes.

Well that pretty much kills the proposal. I can't believe nobody
(including myself) figured this out earlier in the thread. :-(

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)