[Python-Dev] Boolean transition

[Paul Prescod]

"Martin v. Loewis" wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> > The current subtyping strategy provides a better hook for deprecation
> > warnings. My only concern is that we decide and document that booleans
> > will one day be as completely unrelated to integers as exceptions are to
> > strings.
> 
> I'm not sure that this is desirable. By the same rationale, you should
> argue that boolean operations on integers are a bad thing. This would
> be not Pythonic.

Let's take this logic a little further. If you're arguing that booleans
should be subtypes of integers because integers can be used in a boolean
context then I guess booleans should ALSO be subtypes of strings and
lists because strings and lists can also be used in a boolean fashion.

Using an integer as a boolean is common. I do it almost every day I
program in languages with both types. Using a boolean as an integer is
not common in my programming (though Tim's may be different). Where it
crops up in my programming it is probably an error where I passed the
parameters to the function in the wrong order.

 Paul Prescod