Is it safe to replace '==' with 'is' to compare Boolean-values
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
ifx == 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 bool
s, 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.