Understanding equality, inequality, and relational operators
Comparison operators allow you to compare two values. The result of any comparison is always a boolean — either True or False. You will use these operators constantly when making decisions in your programs.
| Operator | Meaning | Example | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
== | equal to | 5 == 5 | True |
!= | not equal to | 5 != 3 | True |
> | greater than | 7 > 3 | True |
< | less than | 2 < 1 | False |
>= | greater than or equal to |
5 >= 5True |
<= | less than or equal to | 4 <= 3 | False |
The result of a comparison is a value of type bool. Python has exactly two boolean values: True and False — note the capital first letter.
You can store comparison results in variables and use them later, just like any other value.
== vs = ConfusionA very common mistake for beginners is using = instead of == when comparing:
= assigns a value. == checks if two values are equal. These are completely different operations.
Python supports a very natural syntax for range checks that doesn't exist in most other languages:
This is equivalent to writing 1 < x and x < 10, but much cleaner. In competitive programming you will find this useful for boundary checks.
Comparison operators work on strings too. Python compares them lexicographically — character by character based on their position in the alphabet (technically, their Unicode value):
This becomes useful when solving problems that involve sorting or ordering words.
Since Python is strongly typed, comparing values of incompatible types will either return False or raise an error:
The comparison 5 == "5" does not raise an error, it simply returns False because an integer and a string can never be the same object. However, arithmetic comparisons like 5 > "5" will raise a TypeError.
Comparison operators return True or False and are the building blocks of all conditional logic. Remember: == for comparison, = for assignment. In the next lesson we will use these operators to make actual decisions in our programs.
a = 10
b = 3
print(a == b) # False
print(a != b) # True
print(a > b) # True
print(a < b) # False
print(a >= 10) # True
print(a <= 9) # False
result = 10 > 5
print(result) # True
print(type(result)) # <class 'bool'>
a = 5 # Assignment — stores the value 5 in a
a == 5 # Comparison — checks if a equals 5, returns True
x = 7
print(1 < x < 10) # True — x is between 1 and 10
print(0 <= x <= 5) # False — x is not between 0 and 5
print("apple" == "apple") # True
print("apple" < "banana") # True — 'a' comes before 'b'
print("b" > "a") # True
print("abc" == "ABC") # False — lowercase and uppercase differ
print(5 == "5") # False — int and string are never equal
print(5 == 5.0) # True — int and float can be compared