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[Python-ideas] A meaningful `if counter:`

Bruce Leban bruce at leapyear.org
Tue Apr 5 23:34:45 CEST 2011 
According to the documentation
http://docs.python.org/release/3.1.3/library/collections.html#collections.Counter.elements
c.elements() returns an empty iterator if there are no elements with counts
> 0.

When you say you want it to be smart, what do you mean besides that?

--- Bruce
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On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 2:16 PM, cool-RR <cool-rr at cool-rr.com> wrote:

> Hello folks,
>
> I noticed today that bool(Counter({'a': 0'})) is True.
>
> Is this wise? I want to be able to do:
>
>     if my_counter:
>         whatever
>
> To check whether my counter has any elements. Currently this seems to be
> impossible because of this behavior.
>
> Will we have to keep this weird behavior because of backwards
> compatibility? If so, perhaps `.elements` could be turned into a smart
> object so we could at least do `if my_counter.elements():` and get the
> expected result.
>
> To people who use `Counter`: Will you find the ability to do boolean checks
> on a counter useful?
>
> If you want a patch let me know and I'll write one.
>
>
> Ram.
>
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