Develop Reference

not understanding boolean output when comparing true and false statements

for the below code, I am not understanding how this is working. I am trying to learn the basics online and no matter what I cannot break the below. but if the flag value is originally false, then essentially line four is saying false = false or false....which is TRUE
def any_lowercase4(s):
flag = False
for c in s:
flag = flag or c.islower()
return flag
print(any_lowercase4('TT'))
It will then print False

Actually False or False is False (not True as you propose)
You can see this with this simple example:
>>> x = False
>>> y = False
>>> print (x or y)
False
>>> z = True
>>> print (x or z)
True
>>>
The complete truth table for or is:
F or F = F
T or F = T
F or T = T
T or T = T
where T = True and F = False

print(any_lowercase4('TT'))
essentially says please check if any character is lower,
which is not.
So, either check for Tt, which outputs True.
In Python, islower() is a built-in method used for string handling.
The islower() methods returns “True” if all characters in the string are lowercase, Otherwise, It returns “False”.
b='Tt'
c='tt'
print (b. islower())
print (c. islower())
for i in b:
print (b. islower())
Outputs
False
True
False
False

Weird behaviour of `not` operator with python list

When I'm trying to check whether a list is empty or not using python's not operator it is behaving in a weird manner.
I tried using the not operator with a list to check whether it is empty or not.
>>> a = []
>>> not (a)
True
>>> not (a) == True
True
>>> not (a) == False
True
>>> True == False
False
The expected output for not (a) == False should be False.

== has higher precedence than not. not (a) == False is parsed as not (a == False).

This is working as expected. Parenthesis added below to clarify how this is being executed:
not (a == True)
# True
not (a == False)
# True
An empty list, a = [], evaluates to False in boolean expressions, but it does not equal False or True. Your expressions in the middle are testing whether it is equal to False or True, so they both evaluate to False, and not False is True.
You can add parenthesis like below to get what you expect:
(not a) == True
# True
(not a) == False
# False

How to test if a value is falsy in Python 3

In Javascript, there is == operator to test if a value is falsy:
'' == false // true
In Python, == corresponds to === in Javascript, which is an exact equation (value & type).
So how to find out if a value is Falsy in Python?

You can obtain the truthiness of a value, by using the bool(..) function:
>>> bool('')
False
>>> bool('foo')
True
>>> bool(1)
True
>>> bool(None)
False
In an if statement, the truthiness is calculated implicitly. You can use the not keyword, to invert the truthiness. For example:
>>> not ''
True
>>> not 'foo'
False
>>> not 1
False
>>> not None
True

To get implicit conversion you can just use not - or (for "truthy") just use the variable in place:
if not None:
print('None')
if not False:
print('False')
if not '':
print('empty string')
if not 0:
print('zero')
if not {}:
print('empty/zero length container')
if 'hello':
print('non empty string, truthy test')

What worked was using ternary:
True if '' else False # False
More verbose than in Javascript, but works.

Even tho this question is old, but there is a not not (kinda hacky), but this is the faster than bool(..) and probably the fastest that's possible, you can do it by:
print(not not '')
print(not not 0)
print(not not 'bar')
Output:
False
False
True

Python - Interesting boolean and string behavior [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Is short-circuiting in assignment statements considered good style?
(2 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I was reading through an API's documentation when I came across a curious little set of statements:
self.use_ssl = kwargs.get('use_ssl', True)
self.scheme = self.use_ssl and 'https://' or 'http://'
After doing some personal testing, I found that if self.use_ssl was set to True, self.scheme would be set to use HTTPS, and HTTP if self.use_ssl was False. Awesomely pythonic, and I'll definitely be stealing this.
Can somebody explain exactly how this works?

In python, an empty string is equivalent to False, a non empty string is equivalent to True
>>> bool('')
False
>>> bool('foo')
True
The behavior of a boolean expression is described in the python 2 documentation, and is the same for python 3.
The expression x and y first evaluates x; if x is false, its value is returned; otherwise, y is evaluated and the resulting value is returned.
The expression x or y first evaluates x; if x is true, its value is returned; otherwise, y is evaluated and the resulting value is returned.
That's why you get the string 'https://' or 'http://' depending on the value of 'self.use_ssl'
Some examples, from the python console:
>>> True or ''
True
>>> True or 'foo'
True
>>> False or ''
''
>>> False or 'foo'
'foo'
>>> '' or True
True
>>> '' or False
False
>>> 'bar' or True
'bar'
>>> 'bar' or False
'bar'
>>> True and ''
''
>>> True and 'foo'
'foo'
>>> False and ''
False
>>> False and 'foo'
False
>>> '' and True
''
>>> '' and False
''
>>> 'bar' and True
True
>>> 'bar' and False
False
You can always convert a boolean expression to a real boolean value using bool()
>>> 1 and 'bar'
'bar'
>>> bool(1 and 'bar')
True

This trick, a and b or c, only works when b itself is a "truthy" value. Consider True and "" or "foo". You might expect it to produce the empty string, but it will produce foo, because True and "" results in the empty string, which is considered False when evaluating "" or "foo". The correct way would be to wrap b and c in a list to guarantee that the second argument to and is truthy (and that the overall result is a list in either case), then extract the first value of that list:
(a and [b] or [c])[0]
To avoid the clunkiness (and inefficiency) of creating and indexing a temporary list, Python introduced the conditional expression:
b if a else c
which does not rely on b having any particular boolean value.

it works like this:
when python interapt this it first checks the self.use_ssl if it is True
it continues in the AND chain to see if the next statement is True.
since the next statement is a string (and not an empty one) it is True
so there is no need to continue to the or since this statement is definetly True already, so the last value is used witch was 'https'
if use_ssl was false then there is no need to evaluate the and part of the condition since the first part is already false so python "skip" it and continue to the or part to check if that is True, since it is again a non empty string it is true, and again the last value used is "returned"

Is it safe to replace '==' with 'is' to compare Boolean-values

I did several Boolean Comparisons:
>>> (True or False) is True
True
>>> (True or False) == True
True
It sounds like == and is are interchangeable for Boolean-values.
Sometimes it's more clear to use is
I want to know that:
Are True and False pre-allocated in python?
Is bool(var) always return the same True(or False) with the pre-allocated True(or False)?
Is it safe to replace == with is to compare Boolean-values?
It's not about Best-Practice.
I just want to know the Truth.

You probably shouldn't ever need to compare booleans. If you are doing something like:
if some_bool == True:
...
...just change it to:
if some_bool:
...
No is or == needed.
As commenters have pointed out, there are valid reasons to compare booleans. If both booleans are unknown and you want to know if one is equal to the other, you should use == or != rather than is or is not (the reason is explained below). Note that this is logically equivalent to xnor and xor respectively, which don't exist as logical operators in Python.
Internally, there should only ever be two boolean literal objects (see also the C API), and bool(x) is True should be True if bool(x) == True for any Python program. Two caveats:
This does not mean that x is True if x == True, however (eg. x = 1).
This is true for the usual implementation of Python (CPython) but might not be true in other implementations. Hence == is a more reliable comparison.

Watch out for what else you may be comparing.
>>> 1 == True
True
>>> 1 is True
False
True and False will have stable object ids for their lifetime in your python instance.
>>> id(True)
4296106928
>>> id(True)
4296106928
is compares the id of an object
EDIT: adding or
Since OP is using or in question it may be worth pointing this out.
or that evaluates True: returns the first 'True' object.
>>> 1 or True
1
>>> 'a' or True
'a'
>>> True or 1
True
or that evaluates False: returns the last 'False' object
>>> False or ''
''
>>> '' or False
False
and that evaluates to True: returns the last 'True' object
>>> True and 1
1
>>> 1 and True
True
and that evaluates to False: returns the first 'False' object
>>> '' and False
''
>>> False and ''
False
This is an important python idiom and it allows concise and compact code for dealing with boolean logic over regular python objects.
>>> bool([])
False
>>> bool([0])
True
>>> bool({})
False
>>> bool({False: False})
True
>>> bool(0)
False
>>> bool(-1)
True
>>> bool('False')
True
>>> bool('')
False
Basically 'empty' objects are False, 'non empty' are True.
Combining this with #detly's and the other answers should provide some insight into how to use if and bools in python.

Yes. There are guaranteed to be exactly two bools, True and False:
Class bool cannot be subclassed
further. Its only instances are False
and True.
That means if you know both operands are bool, == and is are equivalent. However, as detly notes, there's usually no reason to use either in this case.

It seems that all answers deal with True and False as defined after an interpreter startup. Before booleans became part of Python they were often defined as part of a program. Even now (Python 2.6.6) they are only names that can be pointed to different objects:
>>> True = 1
>>> (2 > 1)
True
>>> (2 > 1) == True
True
>>> (2 > 1) is True
False
If you have to deal with older software, be aware of that.

The == operator tests for equality The is keyword tests for object identity. Whether we are talking about the same object. Note, that more variables may refer to the same object.

== and is are both comparison operators, which would return a boolean value - True or False. True has a numeric value of 1 and False has a numeric value of 0.
The operator == compare the values of two objects and objects compared are most often are the same types (int vs int, float vs float), If you compare objects of different types, then they are unequal. The operator is tests for object identity, 'x is y' is true if both x and y have the same id. That is, they are same objects.
So, when you are comparing if you comparing the return values of same type, use == and if you are comparing if two objects are same (be it boolean or anything else), you can use is.
42 is 42 is True and is same as 42 == 42.

Another reason to compare values using == is that both None and False are “falsy” values. And sometimes it’s useful to use None to mark a value as “not defined” or “no value” while considering True and False values to work with:
def some_function(val = None):
"""This function does an awesome thing."""
if val is None:
# Values was not defined.
elif val == False:
# User passed boolean value.
elif val == True:
# User passed boolean value.
else:
# Quack quack.
Somewhat related question: Python != operation vs “is not”.