From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <9ab217670705010756x1c626874nb01ab98e084e135d@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue,  1 May 2007 10:56:34 -0400
From: "Devon H. O'Dell" <devon.odell@gmail.com>
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>,
	"Jon Snader" <jsnader@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] speaking of kenc
In-Reply-To: <20070501144533.GA14908@ix.netcom.com>
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2007/5/1, Jon Snader <jsnader@ix.netcom.com>:
> On Mon, Apr 30, 2007 at 08:22:56PM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
> >
> > it's more in the spirit of oberon, or pascal which have
> > had more formally defined and machine independent
> > types.
> >
>
> Indeed. This (_Bool) does seem to be a solution in search of a
> problem.  Is there anyone (other than a few refugees from Pascal)
> who believes that C suffers from its lack of a formal boolean
> type?

I've seen more than my fair share of tf = !!value; out there, which is
just awful to read. It is very useful to have a defined way of
determining the binary success or failure of an operation without
having to understand whether -1, 1, 0, 38, or -129125 is success,
failure, or indication of an error condition.

> jcs

--dho