[Python-ideas] Programming recommendations (PEP 8) and boolean values

[Ron Adam]

On 08/08/2012 09:11 AM, Michael Foord wrote:
>
> True and False are singletons, so if you want to check precisely for True
> and False then an identity check seems appropriate.
>
> However the "Programming Recommendations" section of PEP 8 has this to say
> on the topic:
>
> Don't compare boolean values to True or False using ==.
>
> Yes:   if greeting:
> No:    if greeting == True:
> Worse: if greeting is True:
>
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#programming-recommendations
>
> It seems to me that there is an important distinction between testing that
> an object is either the boolean True or False and merely checking the
> "truthiness" of an object. Many a bug has been caused by an empty container
> object (or some other falsey object) falling into an "if not value" clause
> that was actually meant to check for the presence of False or None.
>
> Why does PEP 8 recommend not testing "boolean values" (which to me implies
> "values you expect to be a bool") using equality or identity, and more
> specifically why does it say that using an identity check is worse than an
> equality check?


Near the top of the web page you referred is ...

> This document gives coding conventions for the Python code comprising
> the standard library in the main Python distribution.

I think in the context of coding Python's library, the "if greeting:" case 
makes the function more general and easier to use in more situations.

Cheers,
    Ron