On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > Other languages (Ruby, PHP, Javascript, etc.) also have > truthy and falsey values, but in my opinion none of them have got it > right. Python has a unifying model of truthiness: objects which represent > "something" ought to be truthy, those which represent "nothing" ought to > be falsey
Python's model makes a lot of sense. The only other system that I've seen that makes as much sense is Pike's, which can be summarized as: Falsey: 0 (the integer; does the job of None in many contexts) Truthy: Everything else. Python lets you distinguish easily between an empty list and a list with something in it; Pike lets you distinguish between a list and the absence of a list. The use of 'and' and 'or' in returning their arguments is an extremely useful one, but I'm not sure it has a name. Pike and Lua have the same behaviour; neither offers a good term for it. Recommendation: Invent a term if you can't find one, and start using it. :) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
