Re: RFC: booleans and the kernel

Kai Henningsen
2002-01-25T23:59:28Z

timothy.covell@ashavan.org (Timothy Covell) wrote on 26.01.02 in <200201250900.g0P8xoL10082@home.ashavan.org.>:

> On Friday 25 January 2002 00:36, Kai Henningsen wrote:

> > We're talking about a specific language feature, and that feature isn't
> > what you seem to be thinking it is. It does not change anything you can do
> > with ints.
>
> I know, I was talking about typographical errors such as:
>
> int x=0;
>
> if ( x = 1 )
>
>
> or
>
> char x;
> if ( x )
>
> which did not product the desired results. My thought was to encourage the
> use of booleans instead of ints in these kinds of conditionals. I thought

And if you changed the int and/or the char into bool, this would
accomplish exactly nothing. A compiler can warn about assignments in
conditions or uninitialized variables, and gcc does it already (and has
done so since a long time); why you think this has anything to do with
bool seems to be completely unclear to everyone but you.

> admits that there are benefits too. But, I think it amazing that I'm being
> told that I'm an idiot when even the language's author agrees with me
> on my concerns about C.

Of course, that is again not what is happening. You either *weren't*
talking about Richie's concerns, or else you were making an excellent
effort of keeping that fact secret from the rest of us.

What you *were* saying is that you think bool would help get warnings that
you *already* get and that bool has absolutely no relevance to. I didn't
exactly call you an idiot for that, but that is certainly the impression
you left.

MfG Kai