DMD 0.148 release

James Dunne james.jdunne at gmail.com
Sun Feb 26 13:32:40 PST 2006


Derek Parnell wrote:
> 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'?
> 

I actually laughed out loud at that.  Good catch man.  This is why I 
love this NG. :)

>> 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.
> 


-- 
Regards,
James Dunne



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