bool() or similar

[Oliver Fromme]

Hi,

I'm still in the process of learning, but I think I have a
reasonable overview over the language, built-in functions
and libraries.

However, I wonder if there is a good way to convert some-
thing to a boolean value (0 or 1), given any type of object?
Such as a bool() function, which works in the same way as
int() or str().  I.e. it would return 0 when given either
0, "", an empty sequence or an empty mapping, and 1 other-
wise.

The closest thing I could come up with with was:

>>> def bool(x): return not not x
or
>>> def bool(x): return x and 1 or 0

But both of them don't seem to be particularly elegant or
clean.  Is there something I'm missing?

Regards
   Oliver Fromme

-- 
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Oettingenstr. 2, 80538 München
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