While working on issue #18508 I stumbled across this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
...
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.4/enum.py", line 417, in __new__
    if value in cls._value2member_map:
TypeError: unhashable type: 'list'

I'll wrap it in a try-except block, but I must admit I was surprised the answer wasn't False.

Commenting further:

    some_key in dict

is conceptually the same as 

    some_key in dict.keys()

which /would/ return False for an unhashable key -- at least it did in 2.x; for 3.x you have to say

    some_key in list(dict.keys())

which seems like a step backwards.

Is it worth changing __contains__ and keys() to be in line with equality?

As mentioned on python-dev the current behavior seems sane.

1) Just like __getitem__ and __setitem__, __contains__ raises an 
   exception when the key value cannot be used as a key (which normally
   is a programming error)

2) There are values that compare equal and where one of them is 
   hashable and the other is not, such a set() and frozenset() with
   the same contents. If would be strange if
 
      set([1,2]) in { frozenset([1,2]): 'a' }

   returned False, even though the value is equal to a key in the 
   dictionary.


BTW. I've always interpreted "key in a_dict" as 

       try:
           a_dict[key]
           return True
       except KeyError:
           return False

(and not as equivalent to "key in a_dict.keys()").

(Also, if this behavior were to be changed this would be a new feature and as such could only be added to 3.4 and would IMHO require a PEP)

There's no bug here.  It is the way Python has worked for 23 years.

I agree, and the thread on python-dev[1] also came to that conclusion, I'm therefore closing this issue.

[1] http://code.activestate.com/lists/python-dev/123385/