Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
A surprising Python quirk (willmcgugan.com)
2 points by billowycoat 3474 days ago
1 comments

Nothing surprising about this if you know grade school math. Nor is it really about Python at all.

The empty set is a subset of every set.

Are strings sets?
Analogously, the empty net is a subnet of every net, the empty sequence is a subsequence of every sequence etc etc.

Also, [p implies q] is vacuously true if p is false.

Strings are maps from nonnegative integers to the space of characters. You can think of them as sets of ordered pairs or sequences.