> Steven D'Aprano wrote: > > On Sat, 28 Oct 2006 03:13:42 +0100, Steve Holden wrote: > > > >>> Finally, while True/False is a good mental mapping for numeric > >>> comparisons, > >>> take the following: > >>> > >>> >>> if "Cliff is a pillar of the open source community": > >>> .... print "thank you" > >>> .... else: > >>> .... print "bugger off" > >>> > >>> bugger off > >>> > > First off, even though nobody has called me on it, this example really prints > "thank you", not "bugger off". I got confused in my cutting and pasting. > Sorry about that. > > > >>> Clearly this is not true. (Google Cliff/Dyer open source: only 11 hits.), > >>> but the string is *something* so the if block gets evaluated. > >>> > >> >>> if "The above example was bollocks": > >> ... print "You don't know what you are talking about" > >> ... else: > >> ... print "Sorry: of course you are perfectly correct" > >> ... > >> You don't know what you are talking about > > Cliff is making a point about semantics, and he's absolutely correct about > > it, although it is irrelevant since we're talking about two-value logic > > not semantics. > Cheers, > Cliff
I am joining after some network downtime here, so I seem to have missed what the real issue here is. At the risk of being completely irrelevant to the discussion here, I think it doesn't seem to be just about something or nothing - is None something or nothing? It seems to be neither: >>> None >>> None and True >>> None or True True >>> None and False >>> None or False False >>> False or None >>> False and None False >>> True and None >>> True or None True >>> not None True Chetan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
