[M.-A. Lemburg] > ... > That's fine. I'm just talking about the special case for None that > has existed in Python for years - and for a good reason.
That's overstating it a bit ;-) In Python 1.5.1, comparisons were changed so that objects of numeric types compared smaller than objects of non-numeric types, and then 0 < None was true, not None < 0 (which became true substantially later). The reason for that change is explained in Misc/HISTORY (it was an attempt to preserve transitivity across chains of mixed-type comparisons). Later, during the move to rich comparisons, I was hacking the code in the same room with Guido, and realized something special had to be done with None. "Hey, Guido, what should we do about mixed-type comparisons against None?" "Hmm ... what do you think?" "Hmm ... OK, let's make None smaller than other types." "Why?" "Oh, why not?" "Good enough -- but let's not document it -- it's an arbitrary implementation detail." "Of course!" In any case, we thought this was so arbitrary that we didn't hesitate to break that, up until that time, "0 < None" /had/ been true "for years - and for a good reason" ;-) not-all-good-reasons-are-particularly-good-ly y'rs - tim _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
