Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!pt!dld From: dld@F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (David Detlefs) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: Time to standardize "true" and "false" Message-ID:Date: 25 Sep 89 20:49:56 GMT References: <13730@well.UUCP> <9464@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> <2142@dataio.Data-IO.COM> Distribution: comp Organization: CMU CS Department Lines: 31 In-reply-to: bright@Data-IO.COM's message of 25 Sep 89 18:40:48 GMT Several of the posts on this subject have been of the form "why bother if you've already got the int type that does everything you want?" I kind of agree, but I kind of don't: I think you would only really gain something if you really went for it and made Bool (or whatever) part of the language. Specifically: 1) "If," "while," "for," and "do" statement tests would require a boolean. 2) Relational operators (==, >, &&, etc) would return a boolean. I think this might result in measurably safer programs. Just think, errors of the form if (i = 0) ... would become errors. (I'm assuming that there is no implicit conversion between int and boolean.) If you don't take the full step (and I have no hope of this actually happening; there are probably good reasons not to do this. Like backwards compatibility) then it's probably not worth doing. Ah well. Dave -- Dave Detlefs Any correlation between my employer's opinion Carnegie-Mellon CS and my own is statistical rather than causal, dld@cs.cmu.edu except in those cases where I have helped to form my employer's opinion. (Null disclaimer.)