[Python-Dev] Boolean transition (original) (raw)

David Abrahams David Abrahams" <david.abrahams@rcn.com
Sat, 9 Mar 2002 17:22:38 -0500

This rubs my expectations the right way. Does it foreshadow the introduction of boolean operators (e.g. &, |, &&, ||)?

-Dave

----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Prescod" <paul@prescod.net> To: <python-dev@python.org> Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 5:06 PM Subject: [Python-Dev] Boolean transition

I'm in favour of adding the boolean feature in as compatible a manner as possible. But I think that we need a transition plan to separate booleans from integers. Booleans are not integers and True+True-False+5=6 is just weird. Arithmetic manipulation of booleans should be deprecated and should fade away. isinstance(True, int) should be deprecated. etc.

Another strategy is to implement booleans as a totally unrelated type and phase them into the operators later after people have had time to change code that adds or subtracts from the result of boolean operators. The current subtyping strategy provides a better hook for deprecation warnings. My only concern is that we decide and document that booleans will one day be as completely unrelated to integers as exceptions are to strings. Paul Prescod

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