integer >= 1 == True and integer.0 == False is bad, bad, bad!!!

[Alf P. Steinbach /Usenet]

* rantingrick, on 11.07.2010 08:50:
> On Jul 11, 1:22 am, Stephen Hansen<me+list/pyt... at ixokai.io>  wrote:
>
>> Utter nonsense. No one does that unless they are coming from C or some
>> other language without a True/False and don't know about it, or if they
>> are using a codebase which is supporting a very old version of Python
>> before True or False were introduced.
>
> Ah yes, when nothing else seems to work fall back to you default
> programming... FUD and ad hominem
> attacks

I agree with Stephen, but for a different reason: that given desirability of 
implicit conversion to bool for some elementary types, then for uniformity there 
should be such conversion for all of them (and AFAIK there is), and given that, 
the rule should be the same, namely that default value of each type bool's to 
False, and other values to True, and so it is.

The OP should simply represent "not found" as e.g. integer -1 instead of as a 
value of a different type.

And write e.g.

   not_found = -1

      ...

   if choiceIdx1 == choiceIdx2 == not_found:
       bah, none of them
   elif choice2Idx == not_found:
       use choice 1
   elif choice1Idx == not_found:
       use choice 2
   else:
       determine bestest choice


Cheers & hth.,

- Alf


-- 
blog at <url: http://alfps.wordpress.com>