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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re:  Boolean Operators Slighted in C
Message-ID: <1505@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-May-86 22:35:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.1505
Posted: Sun May 25 22:35:07 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 28-May-86 05:59:59 EDT
References: <822@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 25

In article <822@brl-smoke.ARPA> rbj%icst-cmr@smoke.UUCP writes:
>	I find data abstraction to be a Good Thing, and have produced
>	much better code since defining a Boolean data type and using
>	it in a strictly type-correct manner.
>	
>This fact doesn't bother people who write in APL, widely considered
>to be the most mathematical language. Why does it bother you?

When I was writing in APL, I found that a necessary part of writing good
code was always knowing what the data I was dealing with was.  (This doesn't
mean that one cannot write a function which works for more than one data
type; just that one must explicitly know that that is what one is writing.)
If I wrote AxB, I knew whether A was a Boolean or a number; the ability to
declare it could only have helped.

The fact that one can map Booleans into numbers, and thereby get a number of
Boolean operators from the arithmetic ones, is one of those great mixed
blessings.  There is a real loss in readability when one takes advantage of
such things, as C and APL both do.

I think Pascal and ADA are closer to the mark here, regarding Boolean as an
instance of an enumeration type.  This is not merely clever; it is correct.

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108