Question: Given a Boolean value True or False. How to convert it to a string "True" or "False" in Python?
Note that this tutorial doesn’t concern “concatenating a Boolean to a string”. If you want to do this, check out our in-depth article on the Finxter blog.
Simple Bool to String Conversion
To convert a given Boolean value to a string in Python, use the str(boolean) function and pass the Boolean value into it. This converts Boolean True to string "True" and Boolean False to string "False".
Here’s a minimal example:
>>> str(True) 'True'
>>> str(False) 'False'
Python Boolean Type is Integer
Booleans are represented by integers in Python, i.e., bool is a subclass of int. Boolean value True is represented with integer 1. And Boolean value False is represented with integer 0.
Here’s a minimal example:
>>> True == 1
True
>>> False == 0
True
Convert True to ‘1’ and False to ‘0’
To convert a Boolean value to a string '1' or '0', use the expression str(int(boolean)). For instance, str(int(True)) returns '1' and str(int(False)) returns '0'. This is because of Python’s use of integers to represent Boolean values.
Here’s a minimal example:
>>> str(int(True)) '1'
>>> str(int(False)) '0'
Convert List of Boolean to List of Strings
To convert a Boolean to a string list, use the list comprehension expression [str(x) for x in my_bools] assuming the Boolean list is stored in variable my_bools. This converts each Boolean x to a string using the built-in str() function and repeats it for all x in the Boolean list.
Here’s a simple example:
my_bools = [True, True, False, False, True]
my_strings = [str(x) for x in my_bools]
print(my_strings)
# ['True', 'True', 'False', 'False', 'True']
Convert String Back to Boolean
What if you want to convert the string representation 'True' and 'False' (or: '1' and '0') back to the Boolean representation True and False?
Recommended Tutorial: String to Boolean Conversion
Here’s the short summary:
You can convert a string value s to a Boolean value using the Python function bool(s).
For example, bool('True') and bool('1') return True.
However, bool('False') and bool('0') return False as well which may come unexpected to you.
This is because all Python objects are “truthy”, i.e., they have an associated Boolean value. As a rule of thumb: empty values return Boolean True and non-empty values return Boolean False. So, only bool('') on the empty string '' returns False. All other strings return True!
You can see this in the following example:
>>> bool('True')
True
>>> bool('1')
True
>>> bool('2')
True
>>> bool('False')
True
>>> bool('0')
True
>>> bool('')
False
Okay, what to do about it?
Easy – first pass the string into the eval() function and then pass the result into the bool() function. In other words, the expression bool(eval(my_string)) converts a string to a Boolean mapping 'True' and '1' to Boolean True and 'False' and '0' to Boolean False.
Finally – this behavior is as expected by many coders just starting out.
Here’s an example:
>>> bool(eval('False'))
False
>>> bool(eval('0'))
False
>>> bool(eval('True'))
True
>>> bool(eval('1'))
True
Feel free to go over our detailed guide on the function:
Recommended Tutorial: Python eval() deep dive
https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/2022/10/...in-python/