Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!gatech!mcdchg!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Definition of boolean type
Message-ID: <7698@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 12 Feb 89 22:30:15 GMT
References: <10@dbase.UUCP> <9609@smoke.BRL.MIL> <3645@arcturus> <15906@mimsy.UUCP> <27989@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 21

In article <27989@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jas@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Jim Shankland) writes:

>I agree with Karl Heuer:  C would have benefited from a built-in boolean
>type.

Or perhaps a boolean equality operator for people who don't like the looks
of:
(1)    if (expression) action();
and prefer:
(2)    if (expression == SOMETHING) action();
and who don't like:
(3)    if (expression != 0) action();

Method (2) would work (and look better to some people) if C had a boolean
equality operator that would evaluate false only when one of the operands
is zero and one non-zero.  This would have an advantage over a separate
data type in that you would not have to convert the return values from
all those functions that return 0 for failure, some (useful, non-boolean)
value on success.

Les Mikesell