Reference
Steven D'Aprano
steve at pearwood.info
Mon Mar 3 23:52:38 EST 2014
On Tue, 04 Mar 2014 00:22:55 +0200, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> Jerry Hill <malaclypse2 at gmail.com>:
>
>> except for the fact that there has been 20 years of custom saying that
>> comparing to None with equality is wrong.
>
> "if foo == None" is not wrong in any manner. It's just that if you are
> comfortable with the "is" operator and its semantics, "if foo is None"
> is slightly more natural.
>
> You generally use "==" if more than one object could be equal. If you
> know there's only one object of the kind, you convey that knowledge by
> the use of "is" even when functionally, it doesn't matter.
I don't agree that it doesn't matter. Code, even when functionally
equivalent, should express the intention of the programmer in as simple a
fashion as is possible given the constraints of the task, performance,
etc. For example, if you want to add 1 to a number, you would write:
x += 1
not:
x += (127 - 102)//(5**2)
even though you know that the two expressions are exactly equivalent.
Even if you know that there is a peep-hole optimizer that ensures that
the code actually compiled is "x += 1". The intention to the reader is
important.
This is why, unless performance is *really* critical, one should normally
write x*2 when multiplying x by 2 rather than x >> 1. (And in Python, the
overhead means that there is no real performance benefit to using bit
shifts instead of multiplication or division.)
If your intention is to treat None as a singleton sentinel, not as a
value, then you ought to use "is" to signal that intention, rather than
using == even if you know that there won't be any false positives.
--
Steven
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