Why does “not(True) in [False, True]” return False?

If I do this:

>>> False in [False, True]
True

That returns True. Simply because False is in the list.

But if I do:

>>> not(True) in [False, True]
False

That returns False. Whereas not(True) is equal to False:

>>> not(True)
False

Why?

Answer

Operator precedence ^{2.x, 3.x}. The precedence of not is lower than that of in. So it is equivalent to:

>>> not ((True) in [False, True])
False

This is what you want:

>>> (not True) in [False, True]
True

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As @Ben points out: It’s recommended to never write not(True), prefer not True. The former makes it look like a function call, while not is an operator, not a function.