How to Compare Two Objects in Python

Python programming language provides several built-in data types and various operations among them. It is common to need to compare two or more objects for equality, inequality, or other relational tests. This tutorial will guide you on how to compare two objects in Python.

Equality and Identity

There are two ways to compare objects in Python, namely equality and identity. Two objects are considered equal if their respective values are the same. On the other hand, two objects are identical if they both are the same object.

The ‘==’ operator is used to test for equality, while the ‘is’ operator is used to test for identity.

Using ‘==’ Operator

The ‘==’ operator compares the values of both operands and checks for value equality.

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# Python code to demonstrate '==' operator
x = 5
y = 5
print(x == y)

Using ‘is’ Operator

The ‘is’ operator compares the object instances rather than their actual values. Hence, the ‘is’ operator checks for object identity.

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z = 10
a = 10
print(z is a)

Objects of Different Types

It’s worth mentioning that when comparing objects of different types, Python does an equality comparison operation which might sometimes give unexpected results. Always try to compare objects of similar types to maintain accurate results.

Full Python code

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# Python code to demonstrate '==' operator
x = 5
y = 5
print(x == y)
 
# Python code to demonstrate 'is' operator
z = 10
a = 10
print(z is a)

Conclusion

In conclusion, Python provides a wide range of methods to compare two objects. We’ve looked at how you can use ‘==’ and ‘is’ operators for this purpose. It’s important to remember that while ‘==’ compares the values of the objects, ‘is’ checks whether they are the same object or not.