Why does bool(xml.etree.ElementTree.Element) evaluate to False?

Question

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
e = ET.Element(\'Brock\',Role=\"Bodyguard\")
print bool(e)

Why is an xml.etree.ElementTree.Element

Answer 1

From the docs:

http://docs.python.org/library/xml.etree.elementtree.html#element-objects

Caution: Elements with no subelements will test as False. This behavior will change in future versions. Use specific len(elem) or elem is None test instead.