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bpo-16011: Clarify behavior of __contains__ in user defined classes #152

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19 changes: 10 additions & 9 deletions Doc/reference/expressions.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -1431,28 +1431,29 @@ Membership test operations
--------------------------

The operators :keyword:`in` and :keyword:`not in` test for membership. ``x in
s`` evaluates to true if *x* is a member of *s*, and false otherwise. ``x not
in s`` returns the negation of ``x in s``. All built-in sequences and set types
support this as well as dictionary, for which :keyword:`in` tests whether the
dictionary has a given key. For container types such as list, tuple, set,
frozenset, dict, or collections.deque, the expression ``x in y`` is equivalent
s`` evaluates to ``True`` if *x* is a member of *s*, and ``False`` otherwise.
``x not in s`` returns the negation of ``x in s``. All built-in sequences and
set types support this as well as dictionary, for which :keyword:`in` tests
whether the dictionary has a given key. For container types such as list, tuple,
set, frozenset, dict, or collections.deque, the expression ``x in y`` is equivalent
to ``any(x is e or x == e for e in y)``.

For the string and bytes types, ``x in y`` is true if and only if *x* is a
For the string and bytes types, ``x in y`` is ``True`` if and only if *x* is a
substring of *y*. An equivalent test is ``y.find(x) != -1``. Empty strings are
always considered to be a substring of any other string, so ``"" in "abc"`` will
return ``True``.

For user-defined classes which define the :meth:`__contains__` method, ``x in
y`` is true if and only if ``y.__contains__(x)`` is true.
y`` returns ``True`` if ``y.__contains__(x)`` returns a true value, and
``False`` otherwise.

For user-defined classes which do not define :meth:`__contains__` but do define
:meth:`__iter__`, ``x in y`` is true if some value ``z`` with ``x == z`` is
:meth:`__iter__`, ``x in y`` is ``True`` if some value ``z`` with ``x == z`` is
produced while iterating over ``y``. If an exception is raised during the
iteration, it is as if :keyword:`in` raised that exception.

Lastly, the old-style iteration protocol is tried: if a class defines
:meth:`__getitem__`, ``x in y`` is true if and only if there is a non-negative
:meth:`__getitem__`, ``x in y`` is ``True`` if and only if there is a non-negative
integer index *i* such that ``x == y[i]``, and all lower integer indices do not
raise :exc:`IndexError` exception. (If any other exception is raised, it is as
if :keyword:`in` raised that exception).
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