How to confuse a Python programmer

While browsing the internet, I came across the following line of Python code:

True, True, True == (True, True, True)

Counter-intuitively, if you execute the statement, you will end up with:

(True, True, False)

How is this possible I asked myself? (Yes I was a confused Python programmer myself at that point). Well, the answer is relatively simple: == does not do the unpacking for us. So, as a human you think that Python does something along the lines of (True, True, True) == (True, True, True) or True, True, True == True, True, True. However, Python actually interprets the line as follows:

True, True, (True == (True, True, True))

This means that it first evaluates whether (True == (True, True, True)), which is False. Then it returns the rest of the statement as a tuple:¹ (True, True, False).

Another case that can be explained in the same way is False is False is False. Can you guess what the result is when you execute that statement? Hint: Python evaluates the statement as (False is False) & (False is False), which results in True. Now that makes sense, right?

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