Python 2.x gotchas and landmines

Question

The purpose of my question is to strengthen my knowledge base with Python and get a better picture of it, which includes knowing its faults and surprises. To keep things sp

Answer 1

Python 2 has some surprising behaviour with comparisons:

>>> print x
0
>>> print y
1
>>> x < y
False

What's going on? repr() to the rescue:

>>> print "x: %r, y: %r" % (x, y)
x: '0', y: 1