Python in a Nutshell

Name

bool — Python 2.2 and later

Synopsis

bool(x)

Returns 0, also known as False, if argument x evaluates as false; returns 1, also known as True, if argument x evaluates as true. See also Section 4.2.6 in Chapter 4. In Python 2.3, bool becomes a type (a subclass of int), and built-in names False and True refer to the only two instances of type bool. They are still numbers with values of 0 and 1 respectively, but str(True) becomes 'True', and str(False) becomes 'False', while in Python 2.2 the corresponding strings are '0' and '1' respectively.