Ben Finney wrote:
Ethan Furman <et...@stoneleaf.us> writes:
Why is NoneType unable to produce a None instance? I realise that None
is a singleton
That answers your question. Because None is a singleton, the job of its
type is to make sure there are no other instances.
Which it can do quite easily by returning the single instance of None --
it is not necessary to raise an exception to fulfill its duty.
but so are True and False, and bool is able to handle returning them:
Well, they don't meet the definition of a singleton, because there are
two instances of ‘bool’ :-)
Okay, a slightly relaxed definition of singleton, since there is only
ever one instance with the value of True, or the value of False;
likewise, there is only ever one instance with the value of None.
This feels like a violation of 'Special cases aren't special enough to
break the rules.'
In the case of ‘bool’, the rule was broken before being introduced.
I think we disagree on what the rule is. I see it as "Return an
instance if you can." Nobody has yet pointed out a good reason on why
NoneType, NotImplementedType, and ellipsis (to be thorough ;) cannot or
should not return the single instance that exists, when every other
built-in will return either a new object, or the single object that
exists for that value.
~Ethan~
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