Comparing two values

Say I have two variables:

foo1 = 2
foo2 = x # Actual value unknown

foo1 will always be the same (2) but foo2 can take any integer value from x.

Now say I want to compare foo1 to foo2 (find out if it is smaller, bigger or the same size). I could use == to test if they are the same value:

foo1 == foo2 # False

So foo1 does not equal foo2.

Next I see if foo1 is larger with >:

foo1 > foo2 # False 

So we now know that foo1 is smaller than foo2.

This can be put into a convenient function to compare values:

def cmp(arg1, arg2):

    if arg1 == arg2:
        return 0
    elif arg1 > arg2:
        return 1
    elif arg1 < arg2:
        return -1


print(cmp(2, 3))

Where:

• 0 means the same size
• 1 means greater than
• -1 means smaller than

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Interestingly Perl has this inbuilt, the <=> (compareson) operator:

my $foo1 = 2;
my $foo2 = $x;

$foo1 <=> $foo2; 

1 if $foo1 is greater than $foo2

0 if $foo1 and $foo2 are equal

-1 if $foo1 is lower than $foo2

This does the same as the Python function I inplamented above.

^{Please note that I am not really a Perl coder, but have included this to show that other languages have a compareson feature.}

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Creating a function is all very well and works fine, however is there some (similar to what Perl uses) inbuilt function/operator that would compare these two values for me (rather than needing to build it myself)?