while true: !!!

[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk]

Mon, 18 Dec 2000 17:05:51 +0100, Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> pisze:

> I think it would be inconsistent, un-Pythonic, to add a
> fundamental type for 'conceptual' reasons, without any
> practical, measurable benefit.  For example, Python does
> away with the distinction between 'a character' and 'a
> string of length 1' -- a distinction that is religiously
> maintained in C, Pascal, Java, etc,

OTOH Python does not equate characters with integers. C, C++ and Java
do. The difference is conceptual, not in the representation. I don't
agree that having a separate boolean type would be inconsistent.

Scheme is dynamically typed and does have separate true and false
values. Lisp does not, but equates Booleans with the empty list and
symbol t rather than 0 and 1. Smalltalk is dynamically typed and has
separate Booleans.

I think it is only C and languages drawing conventions from C that
equate booleans with numbers, with "any non-zero" meaning "true"
and the canonical "true" value of 1.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
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QRCZAK