Why bool( object )?

Scott David Daniels Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org
Tue Apr 28 12:44:13 EDT 2009


Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:11:11 -0700, Aaron Brady wrote:
>... In a boolean (or truth) context, Something and Nothing behave like True
 > and False in languages with real booleans:
> if obj:
>     print "I am Something"
> else:
>     print "I am Nothing"

If you define the short-circuit boolean operators "and" and "or" as
Python does, the idea of "most anything is True" menas you can have
code that does:
     v = look('here') or look('there') or look('everywhere') or default

This is a nice idiom, and the "or default" can be used in lots of cases.

--Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org



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