Comparisons to `True` and `False`

Last Updated: November 18, 2023 8:01 PM UTC

Last edited by:

Steele Farnsworth <[email protected]>

New tag to explain why `== True` et al are wrong.

It's tempting to think that if statements always need a comparison operator like == or !=, but this isn't true. If you're just checking if a value is truthy or falsey, you don't need == True or == False.

# instead of this...
if user_input.startswith('y') == True:
    my_func(user_input)

# ...write this
if user_input.startswith('y'):
    my_func(user_input)

# for false conditions, instead of this...
if user_input.startswith('y') == False:
    my_func(user_input)

# ...just use `not`
if not user_input.startswith('y'):
    my_func(user_input)