Boolean("false") parses to true

[tuhlmann]

In section "21.6 Booleans" you advice to use Boolean(x) to parse a value into a boolean.
Please note that parsing mostly any String results in true:

Boolean("false")
=> true

null, undefined and "" parse to false.

[ljharb]

That's not for parsing a value - that's for coercing a value. Parsing a string into a boolean is an undefined operation - you need to implement it yourself. If you want the truthy value that is the string "false" to coerce to false, you'd need to write a function that does that conversion for you.

[tuhlmann]

Thanks for the clarification, after looking at the example again I see the difference.

[hshoff]

Hi @tuhlmann, to follow up, just because I was typing this as this closed 😄

This is expected behavior as defined in #15.2

Strings evaluate to false if an empty string '', otherwise true

We use the Comparison Operators & Equality to outline the behavior of the ToBoolean abstract method.

🍻

[tuhlmann]

@hshoff Thanks for the clarification.

For a seasoned Java developer Boolean(something) looks awefully familiar. In Java new Boolean(str) or the preferred static method Boolean.parseBoolean(str) do exactly this parsing stuff.

I guess that's where the confusion came from. Maybe a short note in this section would avoid this trap, saying this does not parse, but coerce...