Equivalent code to the bool() built-in function

Thu Apr 28 13:18:36 EDT 2011

Albert van der Horst <albert at spenarnc.xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>I guess I never thought about it, but there isn't an 'xor' operator to
>>go along with 'or' and 'and'. Must not be something I need very often.
>> There is. <> applied to booleans is xor.
>Best to get into the habit of using '!=' otherwise you'll find Python 3.x a 
bit frustrating.
However, that only works if you have exactly two values: both 'and' and 
'or' will extend easily to any number of values:
 >>> True and False and True
 False
 >>> False or False or True or False
 True
but using != for 'xor' doesn't extend the same way:
 >>> False != False != True
 False
You can use 'sum(...)==1' for a larger number of values but do have to be 
careful that all of them are bools (or 0|1).
-- 
Duncan Booth http://kupuguy.blogspot.com