[Python-ideas] Please reconsider the Boolean evaluation of midnight

[Alexander Belopolsky]

On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 5:16 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au>wrote:

> .. midnight is not special in
> the way “empty” or “zero magnitude” are. Midnight is an arbitrary point
> on a continuum, ..
>

Tell that to people who gather in the Times Square on New Year Eve!

It is very common to implement time-of-day in the languages that lack a
dedicated class as seconds since midnight or fraction of a 24 hour day or
any similar scheme.  In all these schemes midnight is false in boolean
context.

Note that when datetime module was introduced, Python did not have a time
class and people were using int or float to denote time-of-day.
Compatibility with older schemes could be part of the original motivation.
 It also made more sense when the dunder method was spelled __nonzero__.

Whatever the reason was - this is a well established feature and it won't
change.
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