Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
Yigal Chripun wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
Yigal Chripun wrote:
your abstraction inversion example doesn't apply here. The problem I
see is the narrowing implicit cast, i.e. int values behave like
booleans. I have no problem with the reverse which is what your
example is about.
An int does not convert to bool implicitly. An int can be tested with
"if", which is a different thing.
Andrei
that is an implicit cast.
No. An implicit cast is this:
int a;
bool b = a; // doesn't compile
or this:
void fun(bool);
fun(5); // doesn't compile
You are mistakenly presupposing that if() takes a bool. In reality if()
accepts a bool, an integral, a floating-point type, a pointer, an array,
or a class reference.
Andrei
I'm not debating terminology with you nor am I presupposing that if()
currently takes a bool, I know it takes other types as well.
what I am saying is that "if" needs to be fixed such that it _will_ take
only bool. the the C idiom of:
int a = ...;
if (a) {...}
is a bad pattern. it is even more problematic with floats.
it _should_ be written always as:
if (a == 0) { .. }
zero is not false. in fact zero can be very positive: zero errors, zero
cache misses, etc.
