Identity Crisis

The function find_in_list(items, target) should return the index of the first element in items that is equal in value to target. It returns -1 if not found.

It works for most cases — but searching for True in a list containing 1, or False in a list containing 0, mysteriously returns -1 even though those values should match.

The comparison line looks perfectly reasonable. What is Python actually checking?

hint 2after hint 1

hint 3after hint 2

solution

Read the code. Before running anything: what does the last line below give?

def find_in_list(items, target):

"""

Returns the first index where target appears in items.

Returns -1 if not found.

Example: find_in_list([10, 20, 30], 20) -> 1

"""

for i, item in enumerate(items):

if item is target:

return i

return -1

>>> find_in_list([1, 2, 3], True)