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ConfigParser.getboolean() fails if it falls back to a
default value, and the value passed in was a boolean
object (instead of a string) because it unconditionally
does v.lower().
This should be fixed; there's something un-Pythonic
about expecting a boolean value but not being able to
actually provide a boolean as the default.
I've attached a patch (against 2.3.4c1; should apply to
2.3.4, I think) which makes the v.lower() conditional
on v being a string, and adds bool(True), bool(False),
int(1), and int(0) to _boolean_states.
Alternative resolution: change the documentation to
specify that /only/ strings should be passed in the
defaults dictionary. Less Pythonic.

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The method is functioning exactly as documented.
Changing this to a feature request.
FWIW, it seems reasonable to allow a boolean to be passed in
a default; however, calling it unpythonic is a bit extreme
since the whole API is designed to work with text arguments.
My solution would be to just add two lines after the self.get:
 if isinstance(v, bool):
 return v

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I don't see any reason to not allow a boolean as a default.
Raymond's solution seems like a good one to me. Anyone object?

With the latest python, get() itself fails with boolean value default. I
tried with this script:
-------------
from ConfigParser import ConfigParser
cfg = ConfigParser({'var':True})
cfg.add_section('test_section')
print cfg.getboolean('test_section', 'var')
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and it results in
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Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "t.py", line 4, in <module>
 print cfg.getboolean('test_section', 'var')
 File "/localhome/raghu/localwork/cpython/trunk/Lib/ConfigParser.py",
line 349, in getboolean
 v = self.get(section, option)
 File "/localhome/raghu/localwork/cpython/trunk/Lib/ConfigParser.py",
line 545, in get
 return self._interpolate(section, option, value, d)
 File "/localhome/raghu/localwork/cpython/trunk/Lib/ConfigParser.py",
line 585, in _interpolate
 if "%(" in value:
TypeError: argument of type 'bool' is not iterable
-------------
I doubt if it is worth fixing the OP's issue considering that
_interpolate is assuming the value to be string. Can I close this issue?

+1 for closing.