[Python-Dev] Overloading comparison operator for lists (original) (raw)

Rob Cliffe rob.cliffe at btinternet.com
Tue May 28 21:52:09 EDT 2019

On 27/05/2019 04:52:17, Montana Burr wrote:

NumPy arrays have this awesome feature, where array == 3 does an element-wise comparison and returns a list. For example:

np.array([1,2,3,4,5])==3 returns [False,False,True,False,False] It would be cool if Python had similar functionality for lists. Well, it does have:

  [x==3 for x in [1,2,3,4,5]] [False, False, True, False, False]

This is IMHO much more intuitive than your construct overloading "==". It is also more flexible (any operation can be performed on x, not just an equality comparison). So sorry, but I can see no justification for changing the Python language to do something, which can already be done, to be done in a more obscure way. Also     [1,2,3,4,5]==3 is already legal syntax (it evaluates to False, since the operands are not equal), so you are proposing a code-breaking change.

Apologies if someone has already pointed all this out, as is very likely (I have only just (re-)joined python-ideas and may have missed the relevant posts). Best wishes Rob Cliffe

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