Re: RFC: booleans and the kernel

Timothy Covell
2002-01-24T22:45:58Z

On Thursday 24 January 2002 16:38, Robert Love wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-01-25 at 17:30, Timothy Covell wrote:
> > On Thursday 24 January 2002 16:19, Robert Love wrote:
> > > how is "if (x)" any less legit if x is an integer ?
> >
> > What about
> >
> > {
> > char x;
> >
> > if ( x )
> > {
> > printf ("\n We got here\n");
> > }
> > else
> > {
> > // We never get here
> > printf ("\n We never got here\n");
> > }
> > }
> >
> >
> > That's not what I want. It just seems too open to bugs
> > and messy IHMO.
>
> When would you ever use the above code? Your reasoning is "you may
> accidentally check a char for a boolean value." In other words, not
> realize it was a char. What is to say its a boolean? Or not? This
> isn't an argument. How does having a boolean type solve this? Just use
> an int.
>
> Robert Love

It would fix this because then the compiler would refuse to compile
"if (x)" when x is not a bool. That's what I would call type safety.
But I guess that you all are arguing that C wasn't built that way and
that you don't want it.

--
timothy.covell@ashavan.org.