Python Morsels: Equality versus identity in Python

Table of contents

1. The equality operator in Python
2. The is operator in Python
3. How equality and identity work differently?
4. Inequality and non-identity operators
5. Where are identity checks used?
6. Equality vs. Identity

The equality operator in Python

Let's say we have two variables that point to two lists:

>>> a=[2,1,3]>>> b=[2,1,3,4]

When we use the == operator to check whether these lists are equal, we'll see that they are not equal:

>>> a==bFalse

These lists don't have the same values right now, so they're not equal.

Let's update the first list so that these two lists do have equivalent values:

>>> a.append(4)>>> a[2, 1, 3, 4]

If we use == again, we'll see that these lists are equal now:

>>> a==bTrue

Python's == operator checks for equality. Two objects are equal if they represent the same data.

The is operator in Python

Python also has an is …