Note: The attached image is a screenshot of page 31 of Dr. Charles Severance's book, Python for Everybody: Exploring Data Using Python 3 (2024-01-01 Revision).

I thought = was a mathematical operator, not a logical operator; why does Python use

>= instead of >==, or <= instead of <==, or != instead of !==?

Thanks in advance for any clarification. I would have posted this in the help forums of FreeCodeCamp, but I wasn't sure if this question was too.......unspecified(?) for that domain.

Cheers!

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It would be confusing and weird if "=" did different things depending on the context.

= is the assignment operator

== is the comparison operator.

the others using = only is probably just to keep things short, and the fact that the context is a lot clearer with another character like < next to the =

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Pascal uses = for comparison (and := for assignment), which confused the fuck out of me when I switched to C.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Some people in mathematics use := to assign functions, like f(x) := x^2; then when evaluating the function you use f(2) = 4, because it can be ser as a "true" comparison

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I've never seen that, even in university, and it would be equally as confusing without explanation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

I only remember two of my professors using it, and I has to ask the first one what that mean and explain to my classmates on the second one.