True and False in Python

Question

I tried running this piece of code   path     bla bla bla   if path is True      print  True  else      print  False    And it prints False  I thought Python treats anything with value as True  Why is this happening

User · Answer

is compares identity  A string will never be identical to a not-string      is equality  But a string will never be equal to either True or False   You want neither   path     bla bla bla   if path      print  True  else      print  False

User · Answer

While the other posters addressed why is True does what it does  I wanted to respond to this part of your post      I thought Python treats anything with value as True  Why is this happening    Coming from Java  I got tripped up by this  too  Python does not treat anything with a value as True  Witness   if 0      print  Won t get here     This will print nothing because 0 is treated as False  In fact  zero of any numeric type evaluates to False  They also made decimal work the way you d expect   from decimal import   from fractions import    if 0 or 0 0 or 0j or Decimal 0  or Fraction 0  1       print  Won t get here     Here are the other value which evaluate to False   if None or False or    or    or    or    or set   or range 0       print  Won t get here     Sources    Python Truth Value Testing is Awesome Truth Value Testing  in Built-in Types

User · Answer

From 6 11  Boolean operations           In the context of Boolean operations  and also when expressions are used by control flow statements  the following values are interpreted as false  False  None  numeric zero of all types  and empty strings and containers  including strings  tuples  lists  dictionaries  sets and frozensets   All other values are interpreted as true       The key phrasing here that I think you are misunderstanding is  interpreted as false  or  interpreted as true    This does not mean that any of those values are identical to True or False  or even equal to True or False   The expression   bla bla bla  will be treated as true where a Boolean expression is expected  like in an if statement   but the expressions   bla bla bla  is True and   bla bla bla     True will evaluate to False for the reasons in Ignacio s answer

[python] 'True' and 'False' in Python

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