What would you insert instead of ???, so that the program prints True to the monitor x = 'Peter' y = 'Peter' res = ??? print(res)

Question

Options

• Ax < y
• Bx is not y
• Cx is y
• Dx != y

• A
  12% (3)
• B
  8% (2)
• C
  76% (19)
• D
  4% (1)

Explanation

Option C (x is y) prints True because Python's CPython implementation interns short string literals - when you assign 'Peter' to both x and y, Python reuses the same object in memory rather than creating two separate ones, so is (which checks object identity, not value equality) returns True.

Option A (x < y) returns False because the strings are equal, so neither is "less than" the other. Option B (x is not y) is the direct opposite of C - it returns False precisely because they are the same object. Option D (x != y) returns False because the values are identical, making them equal, not unequal.

Memory tip: Think of is as asking "Are these the same object in memory?" and == as asking "Do these have the same value?" - this question exploits string interning to make is behave like ==, which is an implementation detail you'd normally never rely on in real code.

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