On 8/9/2012 10:58 AM, rurpy@yahoo.com wrote:
I realize that one purpose of style conventions are to avoid mistakes, including beginner one's but I and several times found the simplest, most intuitive way to implement tri-value logic was to use {True, False, None} and so think that if "is True" is to be officially discouraged because misuse by some people in the first .5% of their Python careers, the reason for that discouragement should at least be explained in PEP-8.
To repeat what I said at the beginning of the thread. if x is True: is redundant and unnecessary and wasteful EXCEPT in those rare cases where one specifically wants to know that x *is* True AND x could be another true value, so that 'is True' is necessary to differentiate True from other true values.
Tri-value logic with {True, False, None} is not such an exceptional case for True. 'if tri_value:' is equivalent to 'if tri_value is True:'. If you prefer the latter anyway, then ignore PEP 8 on that point.
The same principle applies to False: if x is False: is equivalent to if not x: EXCEPT when one wants to know if x is False AND it could be another false value. The same tri-value logic is such an exception for False and one would need 'x is False' to deal with False before None. Of course, one *could* always write
if x: Trueproc() elif x is None: Noneproc() else: Falseproc()