Is 0 false in Ruby?

I’ve experimented with some if/else statements:

if 0
    print "a"
elsif 1  
    print "b"
else  
    print "c"
end

This code prints out “a”. Does 0 not false in Ruby?

Answer 506720c46d83060002051f33

7 votes

Best answer

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No it’s not. :) Zero is a value, and ALL values in Ruby are evaluated to true, EXCEPT for FALSE and NIL.

Submitted by jezreljane

over 12 years

2 comments

Submitted by justinraczak

over 12 years

I don’t have an explicit frame of reference, but I’m not sure that’s completely accurate. If you run some evaluations, like 0 == true, you’ll get false in return.

Submitted by Edditoria

over 12 years

that’s why I like Ruby. I don’t need to deal with such zero-false evil :p

Answer 50669874cd23860002020114

2 votes

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Nope, as far as i know, it’s not like other languages.
false is false, 0 is an integer, and nil is no value. true is true, 1 is an integer, and nil is no value

Numbers, strings, and all other values evaluate to true. nil evaluates to false. However, nil is not strictly equal to false, because false is a boolean datatype while nil has no datatype.

if false
    print "a"
elsif true  
    print "b"
else  
    print "c"
end

prints out b

edit: added more pointers

Submitted by masfrost

over 12 years

3 comments

Submitted by fanaugen

over 12 years

allow me to correct you on one thing: saying “nil has no datatype” isn’t correct. Technically, nil is an instance of NilClass, and thus is just another Ruby object. So it kind of has a type – the NilClass type.

Submitted by masfrost

over 12 years

Oh yeah, thanks!

Submitted by Edditoria

over 12 years

Alex reminds me the day 1 in Ruby: “Everything is object. 1 is object. Class is object. Nil is object. Object is object. Object is class. Class is class” (then close the book and think I become crazy)