any() and all() on empty list?

[Steven D'Aprano]

Tim Peters wrote:

>>In the all() example, if there *are* no values in S, then none of the
>>values can be != 0, and IMHO all() should return False.
> 
> 
> That would break everything mentioned above.  Think of it another way:
>  if all(seq) is false, shouldn't it be the case that you can point to
> a specific element in seq that is false?  

Think of it this way: if all(seq) is true, shouldn't it 
be the case that you can point to a specific element in 
seq that is true?

It may be that all([]) => True is useful more often 
than all([]) => False would be, in the same way that it 
is useful to define 0! = 1 and other mathematical 
identities, but that doesn't imply that, strictly 
speaking, there isn't some monkey-business going on there.

Now, I'm happy to admit that this is useful 
monkey-business, but it can still lead to unexpected 
results, as in my example in a previous post.



-- 
Steven.