DS&A

Booleans

Boolean is a type of data, with only two possible values: true and false.

• In Python, the type bool has values True and False.
• In Java, the type boolean has values true and false.

Almost every programming language has Booleans, because they’re necessary for the checks, comparisons and other logical conditions in if/else statements and loops.(1)

Try the following in Python:

>>> 1 + 1 == 2
True
>>> 8000 > 9000
False
>>> 'Hello, world!'.startswith('Hello')
True

Try the following in the BlueJ code pad:

>>> 1 + 1 == 2
true (boolean)
>>> 8000 > 9000
false (boolean)
>>> "Hello, world!".startsWith("Hello")
true (boolean)

Many types, such as integers, strings and lists, have operations which result in Boolean values. However, there are also operations on Booleans themselves; consider how a condition like x >= 0 and x <= 10 is evaluated:

• Suppose x has the value 14.
• The left hand side x >= 0 evaluates to True.
• The right hand side x <= 10 evaluates to False.
• So the condition simplifies to True and False.
• Since the left and right hand sides aren’t both True, the result is False.

In particular, ‘and’ is a logical operation just like + is an arithmetic operation; it has input values and an output value, and the output is computed from the inputs.(2) The other two standard logical operations are ‘or’ and ‘not’.(3)

• In Python, these operations are the keywords and, or and not.
• In Java, && means ‘and’, || means ‘or’, and ! means ‘not’.

Try the following in Python:

>>> True and False
False
>>> True or False
True
>>> not True
False

Try the following in the BlueJ code pad:

>>> true && false
false (boolean)
>>> true || false
true (boolean)
>>> !true
false (boolean)

Footnotes

1. Some older, low-level or special purpose languages like C89 or MATLAB use the integer values 0 and 1 rather than having a separate Boolean type.
2. Arithmetic operations have numeric inputs and numeric outputs; comparison operations have numeric inputs and Boolean outputs; logical operations have Boolean inputs and Boolean outputs.
3. Since Booleans can only be true or false, the standard logical operations can be specified by truth tables giving their values in each possible case.

• Tags: 
• binary