On 8/9/16 1:42 PM, Terry Reedy wrote: > On 8/9/2016 9:22 AM, Joseph Bane wrote: >> Hello. >> >> It recently came to my attention that the strtobool function in the >> standard library doesn't return Python native boolean values, but >> rather returns integer 0 or 1: >> >> https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/3.5/Lib/distutils/util.py#l304 >> >> I am curious why this is the defined behavior and whether anyone can >> fill me in regarding this approach. For clarity, I would expect the >> code to `return True` and `return False` rather than `return 1` and >> `return 0`. > > I am rather sure distutils predates 2.2 and the addition of bool. Much > code has been converted from 0/1 to False/True. I don't know if this > particular holdover is intentional -- fear of breaking something -- or > oversight/inertia. > > I searched the tracker for 'strtobool' in component 'distutiles', status > "don't care", and there were no hits. (Search is not perfect, though.) > >
Thanks for the legwork here! I have created the following issue after I read this: http://bugs.python.org/issue27721 Hopefully it will get some more discussion going. Thanks also to Michael Selik for his great advice in his last response! I think it's great we're having such positive conversations! -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list