On 03/03/2016 02:05, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Thu, 3 Mar 2016 08:49 am, Mark Lawrence wrote:
On 02/03/2016 17:23, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Thu, 3 Mar 2016 01:11 am, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
What is missing is the rules that are obeyed by the "is" operator.
I think what is actually missing is some common bloody sense. The Python
docs are written in English, and don't define *hundreds*, possible
*thousands* of words because they are using their normal English meaning.
The docs for `is` say:
6.10.3. Identity comparisons
The operators is and is not test for object identity: x is y is true if
and only if x and y are the same object. x is not y yields the inverse
truth value.
https://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#is-not
In this case, "same object" carries the normal English meaning of "same"
and the normal computer science meaning of "object" in the sense of
"Object Oriented Programming". There's no mystery here, no circular
definition.
Are we discussing UK (highly generalised), Geordie, Glaswegian, US,
Canadian, South African, Australian, New Zealand, or some other form of
English?
To the best of my knowledge, `is` has the same meaning in all variants of
English (although there are sometimes differences in grammatical form,
e.g. "this be that" versus "this is that"). It is a very old word, and such
old words tend to have astonishingly stable semantics and irregular
spelling.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/is#English
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/be#English
That's all right then.
Perhaps we can now get back to the OP's question and not some bloody
stupid philosophical discussion.
--
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.
Mark Lawrence
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
