On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Jonathan M Davis <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Friday 27 August 2010 11:42:54 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: > > I think I mentioned this - the Timer class we use at work has startup > > dictated by true/false. Most of the code I'm reviewing uses: > > > > Timer timer; > > timer.start(); > > > > thus wasting a vertical line (precious) over the simpler but confusing: > > > > Timer timer(true); > > > > Another example from real code: > > > > serialize(output, data, true, true); > > > > The first true means use Base64 encoding. The second means use > compression. > > Oh, I get what you're saying, and I don't exactly think that you're wrong. > I > just think that in many cases, bool works just fine. You often have to look > up > the function anyway, so the added clarity isn't much, and the added > verboseness > can be irritating. Obviously it can become a problem if you have multiple > bools, > and using enums instead can improve clarity in many cases, so using enums > does > have its advantages. When it comes down to it, I don't really have any > problem > with using an enum, but I don't really have a problem with bool either. > Honestly, I don't think that it ever would have occurred to me to use > anything > but an enum did you not propose that enums should be used instead in > Phobos. > > In any case, I've been using the enum model in the date/time code that I've > been > writing, so you won't have to worry about stray bool parameters in there. > > - Jonathan M Davis > _______________________________________________ > phobos mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.puremagic.com/mailman/listinfo/phobos > I generally prefer enums in public or package APIs (because they're more descriptive and not that much more verbose), but bools in module- or class/struct-private functions (because this way I don't have to define yet another type that I'm only going to use in a few places and not that many other people have to understand the code).
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