vieram esses mesmos dois comentários em minha avaliação, mas testei a função separadamente e funciona para listas vazias
Python 3.4.3 |Anaconda 2.3.0 (32-bit)| (default, Jun 4 2015, 15:28:02) Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. IPython 3.2.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Anaconda is brought to you by Continuum Analytics. Please check out: http://continuum.io/thanks and https://anaconda.org ? -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features. %quickref -> Quick reference. help -> Python's own help system. object? -> Details about 'object', use 'object??' for extra details. %guiref -> A brief reference about the graphical user interface. In [1]: type(None) Out[1]: NoneType In [2]: type('None') Out[2]: str In [3]: resp1 = None In [4]: resp2 = 'None' In [5]: resp1 == resp2 Out[5]: False In [6]: if resp1 == resp2: ...: print("iguais") ...: else: ...: print("diferentes") ...: diferentes