Question For Language Lawyers - WAS: Re: Combining colon statementson one line?

[Erik Max Francis]

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

>     It is really good style to depend upon boolean True and False
>     being 1 and 0?  It seems to me that, especially in an OO
>     language, True and False ought to be treated as abstract
>     boolean objects.  In particular, assuming they are 1 and 0
>     (it seems to me) promotes something about the language
>     _implementation) into the application code which is a Bad
>     Thing.

In some they are abstract.  In Python, for backward compatibility (i.e.,
the past conventional use of 'True' and 'False' names), bool is actually
a subclass of int:

> I actually resort to this sort of stuff to keep
>     things as abstract as possible:
> 
>              F = 1 == 0
>              T = not F

Well this is certainly not possible when True and false are builtins.

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