==/EQ() and approx()

[TravisE]

Hi, Tim,

Yes, I was referring specifically to the Bad Argument Type error on types other than two lists. Sorry; it looks like I should have provided some examples.

Essentially, I was looking for some sort of analog to ==/SAME on the HP 48/49/50 family, or even ==/is in Python, which treat the objects being compared as atomic units but also work on objects of dissimilar types (where the exact mechanics vary slightly between == vs. SAME/is, but this isn't my primary concern at the moment). So, if a variable named ‘foo’ contains a string "1", then such a comparison operator (I'll just call it == for the same of example) would give:

Code:

foo=="1" → 1 (same type, same contents)
foo=="11" → 0 (same type, not same size or contents)
foo==1 → 0 (not same type)
foo=={1} → 0 (not same type)
foo=={} → 0 (not same type)

or if ‘foo’ contains {}:

Code:

foo=={} → 1
foo=={0} → 0
foo=={"A"} → 0
foo==0 → 0
foo=="{}" → 0

etc.

EQ() was pretty much what I wanted except for the outright error if the types aren't the same—I was expecting it to simply return 0 in that case. This unfortunately complicates a task like simply checking if a variable contains, for instance, an empty list (vs. anything else, list or not); or if it contains a string of a specific value (vs. anything else, string, list or not), and so on. Instead of writing a simple one-line expression, it seems necessary to also wrap it inside an IFERR, or write additional code to check the types first, then the sizes if it's a list, etc. That's kind of a pain.