How do Python's any and all functions work?

Question

I\'m trying to understand how the any() and all() Python built-in functions work.

I\'m trying to compare the tuples so that if any value i

Answer 1

I know this is old, but I thought it might be helpful to show what these functions look like in code. This really illustrates the logic, better than text or a table IMO. In reality they are implemented in C rather than pure Python, but these are equivalent.

def any(iterable):
    for item in iterable:
        if item:
            return True
    return False

def all(iterable):
    for item in iterable:
        if not item:
            return False
    return True

In particular, you can see that the result for empty iterables is just the natural result, not a special case. You can also see the short-circuiting behaviour; it would actually be more work for there not to be short-circuiting.

When Guido van Rossum (the creator of Python) first proposed adding any() and all(), he explained them by just posting exactly the above snippets of code.