Using assertTrue(==) vs assertEqual in unittest

Question

In the Python unittest module, are there any advantages or disadvantages of using assertTrue() vs. assertEqual() in the following case?

self.assertTrue(a == b)
self.assertEqual(a, b)

Answer 1

Always use assertEqual(), as it customizes failure output.

The method delegates to various helper methods to show you how, for example, two strings or two lists differ when the assertion fails, provided the type of both arguments match and have a type-specific helper method registered.

assertTrue() can only tell you about the assertion failing, not show you why.

From the assertEqual() documentation:

In addition, if first and second are the exact same type and one of list, tuple, dict, set, frozenset or str or any type that a subclass registers with addTypeEqualityFunc() the type-specific equality function will be called in order to generate a more useful default error message (see also the list of type-specific methods).

Only use assertTrue() if there is no more specific assertion available.