🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.951203010216.13007A-100000@barney> mzhou01 <mzhou01@barney.poly.edu> writes:

> I spoke to my university friends about this addendum and they feel the
> say way as I do. Why do we need in boolean type? If it was really
> necessary Dennis Ritchie would have put it in C in the place. He didn't  
> put it in because boolean can be easily create using the language itself, 
> ie: the #define or emum, and Stroustrup didn't added in his second editon.

It's true that C++ users can define a boolean type themselves; that's
not necessarily an argument against putting it in the language
standard, though.  C++ users can also define string classes
themselves, after all, and I hope none of us thinks that the standard
library would be better off without strings.

The argument for bool is a very pragmatic one: users and library
vendors were defining boolean types themselves, and they were all
doing it slightly differently.  When a feature is generally perceived
to be so useful that it's universally implemented, and when different
versions of the feature make interoperability a problem, then it ought
to be standardized.  This sort of thing is the whole reason we need a
standard in the first place.
-- 
  Matt Austern                             He showed his lower teeth.  "We 
  matt@physics.berkeley.edu                all have flaws," he said, "and 
  http://dogbert.lbl.gov/~matt             mine is being wicked."

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