'True' and 'False' in Python

Question

I tried running this piece of code:

path = \'/bla/bla/bla\'

if path is True:
    print \"True\"
else:
    print \"False\"

And it prints

Answer 1

While the other posters addressed why is True does what it does, I wanted to respond to this part of your post:

I thought Python treats anything with value as True. Why is this happening?

Coming from Java, I got tripped up by this, too. Python does not treat anything with a value as True. Witness:

if 0:
    print("Won't get here")

This will print nothing because 0 is treated as False. In fact, zero of any numeric type evaluates to False. They also made decimal work the way you'd expect:

from decimal import *
from fractions import *

if 0 or 0.0 or 0j or Decimal(0) or Fraction(0, 1):
    print("Won't get here")

Here are the other value which evaluate to False:

if None or False or '' or () or [] or {} or set() or range(0):
    print("Won't get here")

Sources:

1. Python Truth Value Testing is Awesome
2. Truth Value Testing (in Built-in Types)