From: Lyle Johnson <ljohnson@...>
Date: 2001-03-08T00:10:09+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:12234] Re: Ruby API function to check for "true"-ness?

> There's the RTEST macro.

Yes, but as Shugo points out in another response to my question, RTEST
returns "true" for some cases that I wouldn't expect it to (namely, an
integer value of zero). But that's OK, that's the documented behavior for
RTEST. I'm probably stuck in a Python mindset where the rules are a little
different; I wrote a quick Ruby script to try a few tests:

        # Check the trueness of various objects in Ruby
        def test_veracity(obj)
          if obj
            puts("#{obj.type} with value [#{obj}] is true.")
          else
            puts("#{obj.type} with value [#{obj}] is false.")
          end
        end

        # Let's try a few examples
        test_veracity(true)
        test_veracity(false)
        test_veracity(nil)
        test_veracity(0)
        test_veracity(1)
        test_veracity(0.0)
        test_veracity(1.0)
        test_veracity("")
        test_veracity("anything")

For this test, only the "nil" and "false" cases come back negative;
everything else registers as true. I sort-of expected the "0", "0.0" and
empty string cases to also come back false. It's not a bug or anything, just
something I need to get used to!