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From: Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au>
Subject: Re: Python Worst Practices
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2015 10:48:21 +1100
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:86449

Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> writes:

> (Flipping the booleans makes no sense to me. When would 0 mean true
> and 1 mean false? Isn't it much more likely that, for instance, 0
> means success and nonzero means error (and maybe there's just one
> error state, so 1 means failure)?)

You've answered your question, I believe. In some contexts – such as
Unix shell – 0 ⇒ success ⇒ true, and non-0 ⇒ failure ⇒ false.

The Unix commands ‘true’ and ‘false’ follow that convention
<URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_and_false_%28commands%29>.

-- 
 \       “Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.” —Henry N. Camp |
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_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney