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Truthy/Falsy Values

Discussions center on truthy and falsy values in programming languages like Python, Ruby, JS, and Lua, debating their convenience versus risks of confusion compared to strict booleans.

📉 Falling 0.4x Programming Languages
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masklinn (18) dragonwriter (17) eru (16) lisper (11) kazinator (11)

Keywords

e.g IMO JS FALSE wordpress.com TRUE a.k IsFoo TS false true false boolean nil true values null numbers type strings

Sample Comments

iam-TJ • Dec 2, 2022 • View on HN

That's already been adopted in Python with its "Truthy" or "Falsy" values!

tosh • Aug 10, 2019 • View on HN

likewise, I forgot about (boolean 0) being true and was confused for a few minutes today :)

capableweb • May 20, 2022 • View on HN

You're talking about hard true/false, in which you are correct. The person you're replying to is talking about "Truthy"/"Falsy", which is different than the hard true/false you're talking about.

aetherson • Dec 25, 2017 • View on HN

I hate truthy- and falsy-ness in general. It just seems like it's ripe for messing up expectations. Why not just get an actual boolean?

eru • Jun 15, 2015 • View on HN

Compare Boolean Blindness (https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/boolean-bli...).

brass9 • Sep 1, 2013 • View on HN

For succintness' sake: you only need "0" a.k.a. FALSE. All else is TRUE.

lixtra • Jan 28, 2018 • View on HN

It's not false. It's falsy.

Y_Y • Apr 13, 2025 • View on HN

I don't think false is truthy.

mercurial • Apr 23, 2014 • View on HN

Yes (though it treats 1 as True and 0 as False, which it really ought to avoid).

mtdewcmu • Jul 12, 2013 • View on HN

Maybe because true is defined as anything that's not false?