Question regarding stdlib distutils strtobool behavior

[Terry Reedy]

On 8/9/2016 9:22 AM, Joseph Bane wrote:
> Hello.
>
> It recently came to my attention that the strtobool function in the
> standard library doesn't return Python native boolean values, but
> rather returns integer 0 or 1:
>
> https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/3.5/Lib/distutils/util.py#l304
>
> I am curious why this is the defined behavior and whether anyone can
> fill me in regarding this approach. For clarity, I would expect the
> code to `return True` and `return False` rather than `return 1` and
> `return 0`.

I am rather sure distutils predates 2.2 and the addition of bool.  Much 
code has been converted from 0/1 to False/True.  I don't know if this 
particular holdover is intentional -- fear of breaking something -- or 
oversight/inertia.

I searched the tracker for 'strtobool' in component 'distutiles', status 
"don't care", and there were no hits.  (Search is not perfect, though.)


-- 
Terry Jan Reedy