Empty tables are equal to None but are not None???

Let the code speak for itself:

>>> from astropy.table import Table
>>> Table() is None
False
>>> Table() == None                                                                                                        
True

Why? For me this is unexpected. Is this documented anywhere? Is this a bug?

[mhvk]

Hmm, let me pipe in as table co-maintainer: I consider it a bug that Table() == None evaluates to True.

Looking at the cause, I agree with @mcara that it doesn’t make much sense to return None in as_array for an empty Table - if the user asked for an array, they should get one! So I think returning an empty array is fine, and I like the suggestion to just remove the if clause altogether, as things will work out that way. (Also a nice example of “Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules”, though we should see whether the next one, “Although practicality beats purity”, holds…)

@mcara - did you already make the change and want to turn it in a PR? If not, @disha012, if you want to try that, that would be great!

Note that it may be that some Table tests will fail - we will then have to look if it is reasonable to change those, or whether that would cause more trouble than it is worth.

[mhvk]

OK, those tests explicitly were for the code not behaving as documented, so I think it is fine to change them - anyway, just left my very brief review; let’s move further discussion about the changes there.