Steven D'Aprano wrote:
My complaint (an oddly
enough the title of this thread!) concerns the fact that Python treats 0
as False and every integer above and below 0 as True. Which is another
example of how *some* aspects of Python support bad coding styles.
Yes, Python does support bad coding styles. The treatment of 0 as a false
value is not one of them though.
Well, actually some people might think otherwise. While I disagree with
the OP flaming style, one could argue that muting an integer into a
boolean makes no sense (I'm one of them). You can still do it, but there
is no "right" way to do it.
You can decide that everything else than 0 is True, but you could also
pickup the integer 3 as false value, it would work as well since it
makes no sense. This is just an arbitrary definition.
Where the OP is fooling himself, is that you can't state that bool-ing
an integer makes no sense and state the line after that 0 *should* |
*has to* return True.
I personally can live with 0 == False (with all due respect to our
C-coding ancestors :) ), however as one of my personal coding rule I
avoid using it.
I prefere to explicitly write what I want to test:
if myInt <> 0:
or
if myInt is not None:
etc...
That way I do not rely on a arbitrary int-to-bool mutation.
JM
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