Why does python `any` return a bool instead of the value?

Question

and and or return the last element they evaluated, but why doesn\'t Python\'s built-in function any?

I mean it\'s pretty easy

Answer 1

I asked this same question on python-ideas, and was told the reason was that any() and all() need to return a value when the sequence is empty, and those values must be False and True. This seems like a weak argument to me.

The functions can't change now, but I think they would be more useful, and better analogs of the and and or operators they generalize, if they returned the first true-ish or false-ish value they encountered.