Booleans (was: Conditional operator in Python?)

[Alex Martelli]

"Magnus Lie Hetland" <mlh at idi.ntnu.no> wrote in message
news:9af8f3$2bs$1 at tyfon.itea.ntnu.no...
> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:9ad5ua06gt at news1.newsguy.com...
> > "Russell E. Owen" <owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu> wrote in message
> > news:9acvud$uk6$1 at nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> >     [snip]
> > > anything except code that already used these as names. I suspect most
> > > folks are not foolish enough to code with "true" or "false" (unless
they
> >
> > Are you perchance assuming that everybody's variable names are
> > in English...?
>
> It seems he does... But if you *don't* use English variable names,
> what is the chance that you'd use the worde "true" and "false"?
> (OK, I'm sure they exist in other languages having other meanings,

Ah, definitely -- for example, in Italian, "false" is the plural
feminine form of the adjective "falso" (same root as English
"false", of course).  Seems a rather natural name, being plural,
for some kind of collection or count of 'false-things'.

> but no we're not really talking major amounts of code... Or?)

Maybe not; then again, I see nothing "foolish" in using a
different language than English for variable-names, in code
that is not meant to be maintained by English speakers.


Alex