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From: robert@am.dsir.govt.nz (Robert Davies)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Boolean confusion
Message-ID: <1991May30.100914.268@am.dsir.govt.nz>
Date: 30 May 91 10:09:14 GMT
References: <332@nazgul.UUCP> <1991May29.145100.18519@watson.ibm.com> <1991May29.171209.14760@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Distribution: comp.lang.c++
Organization: DSIR Applied Mathematics, Wellington, NZ
Lines: 18

In article <1991May29.171209.14760@neon.Stanford.EDU> philip@pescadero.stanford.edu writes:
.......
>|>  C++ should have a
>|> standard built-in Boolean type.
> 
>Yes - maybe it would also catch a lot of those annoying hard to
>find bugs caused by typing "if (thing = whatever)" instead of
>"==". But how many programs would break? I for one would be prepared
>to pay the price for the long-term gain, but I generally try to program
>as if boolean and int are distinct types, so the price wouldn't be
>very high for me.

In cases like this where you do need a change that would damage old
code why can't you have a pragma to turn on or off an old or new
feature? So that old code would still run with the addition of one line
to each source file.

Robert