I don't see a case in IEEE where (x == y) != !(x != y). There _is_ a case where (x != x) is true (when x is NaN), but for such an x, (x == x) will be false.
I am hard pressed to think of a case where __ne__ is actually useful. That said, while it is true you only need one of (__eq__, __ne__), you could make the same claim about (__lt__, __ge__) and (__le__, __gt__). That is, in principle you could get by with only (__eq__, __le__, and __ge__) or, if you prefer, (__ne__, __lt__, __gt__), or any other combination you prefer. Or you could go where C++ is doing and say that _if_ one specifies a single __cmp__ method, it should return one of LT, EQ, GT, and this will automatically give rise to all the comparison operators. "Trade-offs... trafe-offs as far as the eye can see" ;-) On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 4:01 PM, Thomas Nyberg <tomuxi...@gmx.com> wrote: > On 01/08/2018 12:36 PM, Thomas Jollans wrote: > > > > Interesting sentence from that PEP: > > > > "3. The == and != operators are not assumed to be each other's > > complement (e.g. IEEE 754 floating point numbers do not satisfy this)." > > > > Does anybody here know how IEE 754 floating point numbers need __ne__? > > That's very interesting. I'd also like an answer to this. I can't wrap > my head around why it would be true. I've just spent 15 minutes playing > with the interpreter (i.e. checking operations on 0, -0, 7, > float('nan'), float('inf'), etc.) and then also reading a bit about IEEE > 754 online and I can't find any combination of examples where == and != > are not each others' complement. > > Cheers, > Thomas > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list