The statement
if A:
will call A.__nonzero__() (see Special method names documentation) and use the return value of that function. Here’s the summary:
object.__nonzero__(self)
Called to implement truth value testing and the built-in operation bool(); should return False or True, or their integer equivalents 0 or 1. When this method is not defined, __len__() is called, if it is defined, and the object is considered true if its result is nonzero. If a class defines neither __len__() nor __nonzero__(), all its instances are considered true.
On the other hand,
if A is not None:
compares only the reference A with None to see whether it is the same or not.
