<function name="tobool" parent="Global" type="libraryfunc"> <description>Attempts to return an appropriate boolean for the given value</description> <realm>Shared and Menu</realm> <file line="248-L251">lua/includes/util.lua</file> <args> <arg name="val" type="any">The object to be converted to a boolean</arg> </args> <rets> <ret name="" type="boolean">**false** for the boolean false.&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;**false** for "false".&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;**false** for "0".&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;**false** for numeric 0.&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;**false** for nil.&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br /&amp;gt;**true** otherwise.</ret> <ret name="" type="boolean">**false** for the boolean false.&lt;br /&gt;**false** for "false".&lt;br /&gt;**false** for "0".&lt;br /&gt;**false** for numeric 0.&lt;br /&gt;**false** for nil.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;**true** otherwise.</ret> </rets> </function> <example> <description>Demonstrate the output of this function with various values.</description> <code> print("boolean true:", tobool(true)) print("boolean false:", tobool(false)) print("string true:", tobool("true")) print("string false:", tobool("false")) print("numeric 0:", tobool(0)) print("string 0:", tobool("0")) print("string 1:", tobool("1")) print("nil:", tobool(nil)) print("text string:", tobool("not a boolean")) print("empty string:", tobool("")) </code> <output> ``` &amp;lt;nowiki&amp;gt;boolean true: true &lt;nowiki&gt;boolean true: true boolean false: false string true: true string false: false numeric 0: false string 0: false string 1: true nil: false text string: true empty string: true&amp;lt;/nowiki&amp;gt; empty string: true&lt;/nowiki&gt; ``` </output> </example>