tobool

Convert many different representations of a bool to an actual bool or a None

Usage

pip install tobool

from tobool import to_bool

# Examples:
print(to_bool("True"))  # True
print(to_bool("False"))  # False
print(to_bool("Yes"))  # True
print(to_bool("T"))  # True
print(to_bool(1))  # True
print(to_bool(1.0))  # True
print(to_bool("1.0"))  # True
print(to_bool("enabled"))  # True
print(to_bool(b"true"))  # True
print(to_bool("None"))  # None
print(to_bool("n/a"))  # None
print(to_bool(float("nan")))  # None

from tobool import to_bool_strict

# to_bool_strict() will only return a bool
print(to_bool_strict("True"))  # True
print(to_bool_strict(None))  # False
print(to_bool_strict(None, True))  # tobool.tobool.ToBoolNoneValueException: None

Performance

Conversion results are cached via functools.lru_cache, so repeated conversions of the same value cost a single dict lookup. Measured on Python 3.14, a cache hit takes roughly 30 ns, versus roughly 140-720 ns to compute the conversion uncached (3x-22x faster, depending on the input type). Typical workloads such as parsing configuration values, environment variables, or CSV columns convert the same small set of values over and over, which is the case that benefits most.