[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 285: Adding a bool type (original) (raw)

Fredrik Lundh fredrik@pythonware.com
Wed, 3 Apr 2002 20🔞50 +0200

Andrew Koenig wrote:

On the other hand, the library isn't nearly so consistent. Just for fun, I started browsing the library documentation at random.

The very first page I visited was the description of gc, the garbage collector interface. The first function that returns a truth value there is described as isenabled() Returns true if automatic collection is enabled.

import gc gc.isenabled() 1 type(gc.isenabled()) <type 'int'>

endswith(suffix[,start[,end]]) Return true if the string ends with the specified suffix, otherwise return false.

"spam".endswith("m") 1 type("spam".endswith("m")) <type 'int'>

isatty() Return true if the file is connected to a tty(-like) device, else false.

sys.stdout.isatty() 1 type(sys.stdout.isatty()) <type 'int'>

exists(path) Return true if path refers to an existing path.

os.path.exists("/etc/passwd") 1 type(os.path.exists("/etc/passwd")) <type 'int'>

looks pretty consistent to me ;-)

(Python docs tend to use "true" to mean anything which isn't "false", and where operator.truth returns the right thing. this won't change post-PEP -- if you start interpreting "return true" as "return True", you'll be asking for trouble)