I expected bool(1) to equate to True using Python - it does - then I expected other integers to error when converted to bool but that doesn't seem to be the case:

>>> x=23 #<-- replace with any integer
>>> bool(x)
True

What is happening? Am I misunderstanding bool(x) - does this not convert x to a Boolean data type?

A lot of comments about why I find this counter-intuitive. If I write the above like the below then, on first sight with no knowledge of the language, it would seem counter-intuitive:

>>>True == bool(23)
True

From 5.1 Truth Value Testing:

The following values are considered false:

• None
• False
• zero of any numeric type, for example, 0, 0L, 0.0, 0j.
• any empty sequence, for example, '', (), [].
• any empty mapping, for example, {}.
• instances of user-defined classes, if the class defines a __nonzero__() or __len__() method, when that method returns the integer zero or bool value False.

All other values are considered true — so objects of many types arealways true.