Question

I have a class Point with xand y attributes. I’d like to get False comparing a Point object with any other type of object. For instance, Point(0, 1) == None fails:

AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'x'

The class:

class Point():

    def __init__(self, x, y):
        self.x = x
        self.y = y

    def __eq__(self, other):
        return self.x == other.x and self.y == other.y

    def __ne__(self, other):
        return not self.__eq__(other)

How do I configure __eq__to get False in comparison with any other object type?

Answer 1

def __eq__(self, other):
    if not isinstance(other, Point):
        return False
    try:
        return self.x == other.x and self.y == other.y
    except AttributeError:
        return False

First check the type and return False if its not a Point instance. We do this in case they are comparing some other type that happens to have an x or y attribute but isn’t necessarily the same context.

Second catch an attribute error, just in case someone subclasses Point and removes the attribute or changes Point in some way.