while c = f.read(1)

Steve Holden steve at holdenweb.com
Tue Aug 23 13:05:46 EDT 2005


Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 12:15:36 +0200, Magnus Lycka <lycka at carmen.se>
> declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:
> 
> 
>>If you want the behaviour of Python to change, you should
>>write a PEP. It always felt natural to me to interpret empty
>>as false, but I could be wrong. It's strange that this flaw
>>managed to go unnoticed for so long though...
>>
> 
> 	Seemed to fit my world view too... So many other languages used the
> "non-zero" is True, that it made sense to take "non-empty" is True --
> and if "non-empty" is true, then empty must be False.
> 
> 	Of course, there is always VMS -- where status codes were checked in
> LSB... odd number => true, even number => false

... and most *nix shells, where a return code of zero implies "success". 
Of course, this still leaves wiggle room to discuss whether success is 
True or False.

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC             http://www.holdenweb.com/




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