this actually is not () (the lack of space makes it look like a function), () is a tuple, in python an empty collection returns False, this is to make checks simpler. You can type:

if my_list:
  do something

instead of

if len(my_list) > 0:
  do something

not negates it so you get True

str(not()) # 'True'

converts resulting bool type into a string representation

min(str(not())) # 'T'

This might feel odd, but that's also documented. min() not only allows to compare two numbers like it is in most languages, but you can also provide a sequence of values and it will return the smallest one.

String is a sequence of letters.

Letters are comparable according to ASCII (so you can do sorting). In ASCII table capital letters are first, so the 'T' is the smallest value.

ord(min(str(not()))) # 84

this just converts 'T' to Unicode value which is 84

range(ord(min(str(not())))) # range(0, 84)

This creates a sequence of numbers from 0 to 83

sum(range(ord(min(str(not()))))) # 3486

This works like min() except adds up all the numbers in the sequence together, so in our case 0+1+2+3+...+83 = 3486

chr(sum(range(ord(min(str(not())))))) # 'ඞ'

reverse of ord(), converts Unicode value to a character.

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Ziglin 10 points a year ago

Why does not without a parameter return True? I'm starting to like the fact that I haven't touched python in a while.

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LostXOR 23 points a year ago

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takeda 6 points a year ago

Are you sure?

I can't test it now, but to me it looks like () is an empty tuple. Python behavior is that for logic operations empty set equals to false. Then we apply not to get True. Not having space between not operator and parentheses makes it look like it is a function.

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LostXOR 1 point a year ago

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brb 5 points a year ago

God I love python

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Ziglin 5 points a year ago

Why is literally nothing equivalent to None? Is it because None is the default value of an optional parameter? (If so why oh why is it optional)

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spooky2092 5 points a year ago

Because nothing isn't something, and something is true. It's base Boolean logic where everything is either true or false. Null/nothing is false.

It's a weird way to think about conditionals, but it makes sense when you use them in real examples. In my case, I use them like this when I need to make sure that a variable has a value. So I can do something like

If(variable){do things with the variable}else{do stuff when the variable doesn't exist}

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humanspiral 2 points a year ago

in J, many other languages, not null is null.

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pupbiru 3 points a year ago