question about True values

[Paul Rubin]

John Salerno <johnjsal at NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
> I'm a little confused. Why doesn't s evaluate to True in the first
> part, but it does in the second? Is the first statement something
> different?

No.  True and False are boolean values, where booleans are a different
data type from strings, just like strings are different from integers.

  >>> if s:
	print 'hi'

converts s to a boolean during evaluation.  That is, it's the same as

    if bool(s): print 'hi'

bool(s) is a function that converts s to a bool.  If s is a string,
bool(s) is true if s is nonempty, false otherwise.

A comparable thing with integers: suppose

   x = 3.1

then "x == 3" is false, but "int(x) == 3" is true.