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Author thomassen
Recipients docs@python, thomassen
Date 2017-06-29.13:36:17
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Message-id <1498743378.1.0.0570911503542.issue30803@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
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The truth value of sets is not properly documented, in particular regarding whether an empty set is considered false or not.

Ignoring primitive (such as numerals) as well as user-defined types, https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#truth says:

> The following values are considered false:
> 
> - [...]
> - any empty sequence, for example, '', (), [].
> - any empty mapping, for example, {}.
> - [...]
> 
> All other values are considered true

According to https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#sequence-types-list-tuple-range, a set is not a sequence (it is unordered, its elements do not have indices, etc.):

> There are three basic sequence types: lists, tuples, and range objects.

And, according to https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#mapping-types-dict,

> There is currently only one standard mapping type, the dictionary.

So, as per the documentation, the set type is not a type that can ever be False. However, when I try, bool(set()) evaluates to False.

When I asked this on Stack Overflow, someone checked in the CPython code and judged that this is most likely a mere documentation issue: https://stackoverflow.com/a/44813565/6867099
History
Date User Action Args
2017-06-29 13:36:18thomassensetrecipients: + thomassen, docs@python
2017-06-29 13:36:18thomassensetmessageid: <1498743378.1.0.0570911503542.issue30803@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
2017-06-29 13:36:18thomassenlinkissue30803 messages
2017-06-29 13:36:17thomassencreate