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(test) ? a:b

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Sun Oct 26 17:12:46 EDT 2014 
On 10/26/2014 12:15 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> Ben Finney wrote:
>
>> Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> writes:
>>
>>> I suspect that Guido and the core developers disagree with you, since
>>> they had the opportunity to fix that in Python 3 and didn't.
>>
>> That doesn't follow; there are numerous warts in Python 2 that were not
>> fixed in Python 3. As I understand it, the preservation of bool–int
>> equality has more to do with preserving backward compatibility.
>
> On reviewing PEP 285, I think it is safe to say that Guido *explicitly*
> wants bools to be ints, not just for backwards compatibility:
>
>      4) Should we strive to eliminate non-Boolean operations on bools
>         in the future, through suitable warnings, so that for example
>         True+1 would eventually (in Python 3000) be illegal?
>
>      => No.
>
>         There's a small but vocal minority that would prefer to see
>         "textbook" bools that don't support arithmetic operations at
>         all, but most reviewers agree with me that bools should always
>         allow arithmetic operations.
>
> http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0285/

Thank you for digging this up.  I was one of the 'most reviewers'.

Even though filter now returns an iterator, so that one can write

sum(1 for _ in filter(None, iterable_of_bools))

without creating an unneeded itermediate list, I still prefer

sum(iterable_of_bools)

for efficiency not only for the machine but also for me writing and reading.

[snip of fine disquisition on the subject to which I have nothing to add]

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy
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