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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