"/a" is not "/a" ?

[Steven D'Aprano]

Gary Herron wrote:

>> Huh? How am I supposed to compare immutable types for identity then? Your
>> bizarre instruction would prohibit:
>>
>> if something is None
>>   
> 
> Just use:
> 
>   if something == None
> 
> It does *exactly* the same thing.

Wrong.

"something is None" is a pointer comparison. It's blindingly fast, and it
will only return True if something is the same object as None. Any other
object *must* return False.

"something == None" calls something.__eq__(None), which is a method of
arbitrary complexity, which may cause arbitrary side-effects. It can have
false positives, where objects with unexpected __eq__ methods may return
True, which is almost certainly not the intention of the function author
and therefore a bug.

[...]
> If they use a couple "something==None" instead of "something is None"
> in their code while learning Python, it won't hurt, 

Apart from the subtle bugs they introduce into their code.

> and they can change 
> their style when they understand the difference.  And meanwhile they
> will skip  traps newbies fall into when they don't understand these
> things yet.

How about teaching them the right reasons for using "is" instead of giving
them false information by telling them they should never use it?


-- 
Steven