Elegant way to compare sequences

Question

Does python provide an elegant way to check for \"equality\" of sequences of different types? The following work, but they seem rather ugly and verbose for python code:

Answer 1

I think it's a good idea to special case when both sequences are type list. Comparing two lists is faster (and more memory efficient) than converting both to tuples.

In the case that either a or b are not lists, they are both converted to tuple. There is no overhead if one or both are already tuples, as tuple() just returns a reference to the original object in that case.

def comp(a, b):
    if len(a) != len(b):
        return False
    if type(a) == type(b) == list:
        return a == b
    a = tuple(a)
    b = tuple(b)
    return a == b