PEP 285: Adding a bool type

[Christian Tanzer]

Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:

> >     Because the repr() or str() of a bool value is different from an
> >     int value, some code (for example doctest-based unit tests, and
> >     possibly database code that relies on things like "%s" % truth)
> >     may fail.  How much of a backwards compatibility problem this will
> >     be, I don't know.  If we this turns out to be a real problem, we
> >     could changes the rules so that str() of a bool returns "0" or
> >     "1", while repr() of a bool still returns "False" or "True".
>
> Where is the backward compatibility problem for using bool?  At present,
> no one uses it, so none of their types will be bools (right?).  Even if
> they happen to use the values True and False (or whatever gets adopted),
> those can be overridden just like None, so if they define and use them
> they should get their values, not Python's.  Right?

The value of `"%s" (not x, )` is going to change. Any code depending
on the old way will break.

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
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