Absense of bool

[AommiK]

First of all: I love C and think that it's beautiful. However, there is
at least one MAJOR flaw: the lack of a boolean type.

OK. Some of you might refer to C99 and its _Bool (what's up with the
uppercase 'B' anyway?) and the header you can include (apparently) to
get a real "bool". This isn't my point, however -- it should have been
there from the beginning.

Char is a small int. We all know that. However, "char some_bool = 0;"
simply feels wrong, and I think that most of you agree. Plus, it's
still too large.

"int some_bool = 0;" is what I -- and everyone else, I assume -- use
for bools. But an int is a very large data type for something that will
only ever be true or false (1 or 0). This really, really bugs me.

Why, back when C was designed, didn't they see a reason to build in a
boolean type into the language? Now it matters less, I guess, but back
then, there should have been very strong technical reasons. It just
doesn't make any sense whatsoever to me.

I have asked many people about this for quite some time, and they are
all just telling me that I'm silly for bringing it up. Why? It's not
that I NEED a bool to get anything done -- it's the principle. Saving
resources and coding a little more prettily is a Good Thing (TM) IMO.

So... can somebody properly explain this to me once and for all? I'm
sure there MUST be a logical explanation that nobody seems to really
understand. The madness must end.

bool some_bool = 0; /* How great it would be... */

[Bart]

On Nov 26, 12:53 am, Bart <[e-mail]:

An array of Bool could save considerable resources, typically 87.5%,
if implemented as a bit-array. There would be implementation issues in
C however as a bit wouldn't be directly addressable.

Bart

Sorry I didn't realise this thread is 3 weeks old.

Bloody Google showing this near the top because of a late post. (Will
be even nearer the top now.)

[Chris Hills]

In article
<8a**********************************@e4g2000hsg.g ooglegroups.com>, Bart
<[e-mail]

>On Nov 4, 2:05 am, "J. J. Farrell" <[e-mail]:

>On Nov 3, 10:56 pm, AommiK <[e-mail]:

First of all: I love C and think that it's beautiful. However, there is
at least one MAJOR flaw: the lack of a boolean type.

It's not
that I NEED a bool to get anything done -- it's the principle. Saving
resources and coding a little more prettily is a Good Thing (TM) IMO.

How would it save resources? A boolean type smaller than char would
require more resources to implement and at run time. How would it make
coding any prettier?

An array of Bool could save considerable resources, typically 87.5%,
if implemented as a bit-array. There would be implementation issues in
C however as a bit wouldn't be directly addressable.

Some MCU have directly addressable bit types and you can save a lot of
resources.

However in most MCU that will not work with anything less than a byte
you are going to have to do a code work around.... SO you have to
balance the speed of using a byte per bool or the memory saving of a
bit per bit and have it slower and a bit more code.
--
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