Why do most programming languages only have binary equality comparison operators?

Question

In natural languages, we would say \"some color is a primary color if the color is red, blue, or yellow.\"

In every programming language I\'ve seen, that translates

Answer 1

In Python you can say ...

isPrimaryColor = someColor in ('Red', 'Blue', 'Yellow')

... which I find more readable than your (== "Red" or == "Blue") syntax. There's a few reasons to add syntax support for a language feature:

• Efficiency: Not a reason here, since there's no speed improvement.
• Functionality: Also not a concern; there's nothing you can do in the new syntax that you can't do in the old.
• Legibility: Most languages handle the case where you're checking the equality of multiple values just fine. In other cases (e.g., someNumber (> 1 and < 10)) it might be more useful, but even then it doesn't buy you much (and Python allows you to say 1 < someNumber < 10, which is even clearer).

So it's not clear the proposed change is particularly helpful.