Why does org.apache.commons.lang.BooleanUtils.isTrue(Boolean bool) use the ternary operator?

Question

I F3'd into this for no particular reason, and was surprised to see this method implemented as follows:

public static boolean isTrue(Boolean bool) {
        if (bool == null) {
            return false;
        }
        return bool.booleanValue() ? true : false;
    }

Why not?

public static boolean isTrue(Boolean bool) {
        if (bool == null) {
            return false;
        }
        return bool.booleanValue();
    }

It doesn't really matter, so I wondered is there some benefit to it? Readability is a weak enough argument, I consider this to be noise. Unless there is some other benefit that I am missing.

Answer 1

I can't find any justifiable reason.

The API specification for Java says:

public boolean booleanValue()

Returns the value of this Boolean object as a boolean primitive.

So if our bool object is:

Boolean bool = new Boolean(true);

This is equivalent:

bool.booleanValue() == true;

The ternary comparator here is redundant and decrease the readability.