Pearu> So, could you check what is the type/value of Pearu> self.search_static_first in your case? Does this tell you what you need to know? % python Python 2.3a0 (#90, Sep 28 2002, 09:08:31) [GCC 2.96 20000731 (Mandrake Linux 8.1 2.96-0.62mdk)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import ConfigParser >>> cp = ConfigParser.ConfigParser() >>> cp.read("dummy.ini") >>> cp.getboolean("Tokenizer", "mine_received_headers") False The file dummy.ini has a section named "Tokenizer" that contains a boolean option named "mine_received_headers". Looks like in 2.3 .getboolean() returns booleans. Also, note that since booleans are a subclass of ints, your assert could be coded as assert isinstance(self.search_static_first, int) Skip