Python "is" behavior

[michalis.avraam]

I am not certain why this is the case, but...

>>a = 256
b = 256
a is b

True

>>a = 257
b = 257
a is b

False

Can anyone explain this further? Why does it happen? 8-bit integer
differences?

[George Sakkis]

On Jun 20, 12:31 pm, [e-mail] wrote:

I am not certain why this is the case, but...

>a = 256
b = 256
a is b

True

>a = 257
b = 257
a is b

False

Can anyone explain this further? Why does it happen? 8-bit integer
differences?

No, implementation-dependent optimization (caching). For all we know,
the next python version may cache up to 1024 or it may turn off
caching completely; do not rely on it. More generally, do not use 'is'
when you really mean '=='.

George

[michalis.avraam]

On Jun 20, 9:42*am, George Sakkis <[e-mail]:

On Jun 20, 12:31 pm, [e-mail] wrote:

I am not certain why this is the case, but...

>>a = 256
>>b = 256
>>a is b

True

>>a = 257
>>b = 257
>>a is b

False

Can anyone explain this further? Why does it happen? 8-bit integer
differences?

No, implementation-dependent optimization (caching). For all we know,
the next python version may cache up to 1024 or it may turn off
caching completely; do not rely on it. More generally, do not use 'is'
when you really mean '=='.

George

Thank you George. I am very curious about some of these internal
Python things that I keep stumbling upon through friends. And thank
you for all the help!

[George Sakkis]

On Jun 20, 12:45 pm, [e-mail] wrote:

On Jun 20, 9:42 am, George Sakkis <[e-mail]:

On Jun 20, 12:31 pm, [e-mail] wrote:

I am not certain why this is the case, but...

>a = 256
>b = 256
>a is b

True

>a = 257
>b = 257
>a is b

False

Can anyone explain this further? Why does it happen? 8-bit integer
differences?

No, implementation-dependent optimization (caching). For all we know,
the next python version may cache up to 1024 or it may turn off
caching completely; do not rely on it. More generally, do not use 'is'
when you really mean '=='.

George

Thank you George. I am very curious about some of these internal
Python things that I keep stumbling upon through friends. And thank
you for all the help!

As far it's plain curiosity it's ok, but it's a small implementation
detail you shouldn't rely on. There's nothing magic about 256, just
the size decided for 2.5. If you tried it on 2.4 you'd get:

Python 2.4.2 (#1, Mar 8 2006, 13:24:00)
[GCC 3.4.4 20050721 (Red Hat 3.4.4-2)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>a=99
b=99
a is b

True

>>a=100
b=100
a is b

False

I was more surprised by the following:

Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, May 8 2007, 14:46:30)
[GCC 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-3)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>a= 123456; b=123456; a is b

True

For some reason, stacking multiple statements reuses the same object.

George

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22Martin_v=2E_L=F6wis=22?=]

For some reason, stacking multiple statements reuses the same object.

Each code object has a co_consts tuple referring to all constants used
in the code. The compiler interns duplicate constants for a single
compiler run, resulting in the same object being used when the code
is put into a single line (or in a function, or module).

When the code is split into multiple interactive statements, the
compiler runs multiple times, and doesn't know anything about past
runs.

Regards,
Martin