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From: gwyn@brl-vgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: C programming syle poll
Message-ID: <1203@brl-vgr.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 1-May-84 18:01:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-vgr.1203
Posted: Tue May  1 18:01:55 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 2-May-84 06:33:36 EDT
References: <137@iwlc6.UUCP>
Organization: Ballistics Research Lab
Lines: 30


	x == 5
evaluates to 1 (nothing else!) if true, 0 if false.

However, I agree that
	y = x == 5;
is poor programming practice IF Y IS AN INT.  It is perfectly okay if
you make the distinction between ints and Booleans, and is common
practice in well-written Pascal and even Fortran.  E.g.

typedef int	bool;

foo()
{
	register bool	y;
	int		x;

	...
	y = x == 5;
	...
	if ( y )
		...
}

I recommend AGAINST performing arithmetic with Booleans (i.e., using
a Boolean datum as a numerical 1 or 0); this is illegal in other
Algol-based languages and comes under the heading of "tricky" coding.

I religiously keep ints and Booleans distinct in my code and have
found that it helps keep the code clean and understandable.