Booleans

Booleans represent one of two values: True or False.

Boolean Values

In programming you often need to know if an expression is True or False.

You can evaluate any expression in Python, and get one of two answers, True or False.

When you compare two values, the expression is evaluated and Python returns the Boolean answer:

// Some code

print(10 > 9)
print(10 == 9)
print(10 < 9)

Example

Print a message based on whether the condition is True or False:

// Some code
a = 200
b = 33

if b > a:
  print("b is greater than a")
else:
  print("b is not greater than a")

Evaluate Values and Variables

The bool() function allows you to evaluate any value, and give you True or False in return,

Example

Evaluate two variables:

// Some code
x = "Hello"
y = 15

print(bool(x))
print(bool(y))

Most Values are True

Almost any value is evaluated to True if it has some sort of content.

Any string is True, except empty strings.

Any number is True, except 0.

Any list, tuple, set, and dictionary are True, except empty ones.

Example

The following will return True:

// Some code
bool("abc")
bool(123)
bool(["apple", "cherry", "banana"])

Some Values are False

In fact, there are not many values that evaluate to False, except empty values, such as (), [], {}, "", the number 0, and the value None. And of course the value False evaluates to False.

Example

The following will return False:

//Example code
bool(False)
bool(None)
bool(0)
bool("")
bool(())
bool([])
bool({})