"is" And "id" In Python 3.5

i have questions: I'm using python 3.5 , win7-32bit system. Here's my code: a=3 b=3 print(id(a)) print(id(b)) it returns: 1678268160 1678268160 So we could know that a and b refe

Solution 1:

id returns a Python int object (the memory address of the object you're id-ing, though that's an implementation detail). But aside from very small ints (again, implementation detail), there is no int caching in Python; if you compute the same int two ways, it's two different int objects that happen to have the same value. Similarly, a fresh int is created on each call to id, even if the objects are the same.

The equivalence for id and is is that a is b implies id(a) == id(b), not id(a) is id(b) (and in fact, since ids are large numbers, id(a) is id(b) is almost always False).

Also note, your test case is flawed in other ways:

a = 3
b = 3
a is b

only returns True for the is comparison because of the small int cache in CPython; if you'd done:

a = 1000
b = 1000
a is b

a is b would be False; your assumptions about identity only hold in CPython for numbers in the range -5 to 256 inclusive, which are singletons for performance reasons, but all other ints are recreated as needed, not singletons.

Solution 2:

id(a) is id(b) compares the ids of the ids returned by the id function.

id(a) == id(b) will be True since the a is b and during an object's lifetime, the value returned by id will always be the same. However, each time id is called, a distinct integer (that has the same value) is returned so id(a) is id(b) is False.