DMD 0.148 release

[Derek Parnell]

On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 00:02:08 +1100, Georg Wrede <georg at nospam.org> wrote:

> Derek Parnell wrote:
>> Walter is still living in the C/C++ past with this concept, which is   
>> strange seeing he has implemented so many progressive concepts in D.   
>> Boolean as an integer is just retro.
>
> So am I.

Apparently so.

> Booleans have to be int.

Why? And do you mean they have to be implemented using 'int' or are you  
saying that they are intrinsically integers?

> A boolean may have any "numeric" value, but if   implicitly cast to a  
> numeric type, it should return 1 or 0.

Why?

> D IS A PRACTICAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE.

Which means what, exactly? For example, does the term 'practical' also  
embrace the concept of 'cost-effective to maintain'?

> Forcing booleans to be 1/0 all the way is just academic, purist,  
> impractical bigotry. About as smart as having the bit type.

No one is saying that booleans must be forced to be 1/0? Why did you think  
that this was what I was saying?

> (Besides, if booleans, as some say here, are _only_ abstract concepts,  
> then we might as well decide to have 0 mean true and 1 mean false.

Exactly! The implementation is not the concept. Of course, this would not  
be a very efficient implementation but it is a possiblity.

> Heh, there's only one truth but millions of lies! But we live in a world  
> with other people. And computers.)

Did you just say that there is one 'zero' but millions of 'ones'?

> Now, specifying 0 to mean false and everything else to mean not-false,  
> we go along with the hardware, the computer industry, half a century of  
> programming PRACTICE, and make life less difficult for anybody with a  
> professional programming background before moving to D.

And that's why it is a more efficient implementation. I agree that this is  
how booleans will probably be implemented. But there are other sematics  
that go with numbers that do not belong in the domain of booleans.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia