PEP 285: Adding a bool type

[Tim Peters]

[Guido, on why operator.truth() should change to return True/False]
> Tim must be missing something.  The obvious way to turn a bool b into
> an int is int(b).

It's also an incorrect way for me, because I meant "true/false expression"
in the way Python has always meant it, e.g. operator.truth([]) == 0, but
int([]) raises an exception.  The alternative int(bool(b)) is not obvious
(else you would have thought of it first <wink>), and becomes needed only if
operator.truth() is changed.

> Having to import the obscure 'operator' module for this purpose is
> backwards.

Under the PEP it's extremely easy to get a bool result (bool(b)), so I favor
presuming that anyone bothering to use operator.truth() will do so because
bool() doesn't do what they want; and if they're using truth() in 2.2, are
doing so because they specifically want a 0/1 result.

> (IMO there's almost *never* a reason to import that module anyway.)

That's not a reason to change what it does -- people who do import it
generally know exactly what they're doing, or have no idea <wink>.