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Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct?

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On Thursday, March 5, 2015 at 2:27:12 PM UTC-8, rand...@fastmail.us wrote:
> It's been brought up on Stack Overflow that the "in" operator (on
> tuples, and by my testing on dict and list, as well as dict lookup) uses
> object identity as a shortcut, and returns true immediately if the
> object being tested *is* an element of the container. However, the
> contains operation does not specify whether object identity or equality
> is to be used. In effect, the built-in container types use a hybrid
> test: "a is b or a == b".
> 
> My question is, is this a *correct* implementation of the operator, or
> are objects "supposed to" use a basis of equality for these tests?

I would argue that if `a is b` then it is obvious that `a == b`, so if all you care about is whether or not `a == b`, then it shouldn't matter if `a is b` is checked first.  It could greatly speed up comparisons for objects that are expensive to compare.

I would also argue that the "in" operator *SHOULD* be using equality of value.  Otherwise, if it only used equality of identity, testing if user input is valid by seeing if it is "in" a list of valid inputs wouldn't work.  Testing identity in this case would *never* be true unless you were dealing with a select number of integers.

>>> i = input()
5
>>> i is 5
True
>>> i = intput()
999999
>>> i is 999999
False
>>> i in [1, 2, 3, 999999]
True

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Is nan in (nan,) correct? random832@fastmail.us - 2015-03-05 17:26 -0500
  Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? sohcahtoa82@gmail.com - 2015-03-05 15:11 -0800
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2015-03-06 10:20 +1100
      Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? sohcahtoa82@gmail.com - 2015-03-05 15:27 -0800
        Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2015-03-06 10:39 +1100
        Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-03-06 10:40 +1100
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-03-06 10:25 +1100
  Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-03-06 13:09 +1100
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2015-03-06 13:55 +1100
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2015-03-05 19:18 -0800
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2015-03-06 14:26 +1100
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2015-03-05 19:44 -0800
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-03-06 14:49 +1100
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? random832@fastmail.us - 2015-03-05 23:37 -0500
      Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-03-07 04:07 +1100
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2015-03-06 04:46 +0000
  Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2015-03-06 01:50 -0800
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-03-06 21:01 +1100
      Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2015-03-06 02:22 -0800
        Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-03-07 03:59 +1100
          Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2015-03-06 10:04 -0800
            Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2015-03-06 10:16 -0800
      Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-03-06 15:34 +0000
    Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-03-07 03:43 +1100
      Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2015-03-06 09:04 -0800
        Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-03-07 04:16 +1100
          Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2015-03-06 09:36 -0800
        Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-03-07 10:33 +1100
          Re: Is nan in (nan,) correct? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2015-03-06 18:37 -0800

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