BUG: Cannot astype from IntegerArray to BooleanArray with missing values

[jorisvandenbossche]

For the boolean -> integer array conversion, I added a special path for that. But astypeing integer to boolean is currently not working:

In [23]: a = pd.array([1, 0, pd.NA])  

In [24]: a  
Out[24]: 
<IntegerArray>
[1, 0, <NA>]
Length: 3, dtype: Int64

In [25]: a.astype("boolean")  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-25-41973ed53ee3> in <module>
----> 1 a.astype("boolean")

~/scipy/pandas/pandas/core/arrays/integer.py in astype(self, dtype, copy)
    454             kwargs = {}
    455 
--> 456         data = self.to_numpy(dtype=dtype, **kwargs)
    457         return astype_nansafe(data, dtype, copy=False)
    458 

~/scipy/pandas/pandas/core/arrays/masked.py in to_numpy(self, dtype, copy, na_value)
    124             ):
    125                 raise ValueError(
--> 126                     f"cannot convert to '{dtype}'-dtype NumPy array "
    127                     "with missing values. Specify an appropriate 'na_value' "
    128                     "for this dtype."

ValueError: cannot convert to 'boolean'-dtype NumPy array with missing values. Specify an appropriate 'na_value' for this dtype.

In [26]: a.astype(pd.BooleanDtype()) 
...
ValueError: cannot convert to 'boolean'-dtype NumPy array with missing values. Specify an appropriate 'na_value' for this dtype.

while for conversions to other nullable dtypes, this should be possible.

[TomAugspurger]

Will we treat all non-zero values (other than NA) as True? We should match the behavior in the constructor.

[jorisvandenbossche]

Good question. I suppose yes? That's what numpy also does. In the constructor, we are actually a bit more conservative, and only allow 0/1/NA-like:

In [30]: pd.array([0, 1], dtype="boolean")
Out[30]: 
<BooleanArray>
[False, True]
Length: 2, dtype: boolean

In [31]: pd.array([0, 1, 2], dtype="boolean")
...
TypeError: Need to pass bool-like values