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Why do libraries define their own true and false? (pawb.social)

submitted 2 days ago by crimsonpoodle@pawb.social to c/programming@programming.dev

61 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I’m working through the vulkan tutorial and came across GLFW_TRUE and GLFW_FALSE. I presume there’s a good reason but in looking at the docs it’s just defining 1 and 0, so I’m sorta at a loss as to why some libraries do this (especially in cpp?).

Tangentially related is having things like vk_result which is a struct that stores an enum full of integer codes.

Wouldn’t it be easier to replace these variables with raw int codes or in the case of GLFW just 1 and 0?

Coming mostly from C, and having my caps lock bound to escape for vim, the amount of all caps variables is arduous for my admittedly short fingers.

Anyway hopefully one of you knows why libraries do this thanks!

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[–] forrcaho@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Something like if (stupid_bool & 0x01) should work for those.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 days ago

Yeah of course we convert, but it effectively means you need this little custom conversion layer between every application and its database. It's a pain.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I imagine this would still lead to a never ending stream of subtle logic errors.

from bossland import billysbool, billysand
from geography import latlong
import telephony

def send_missile_alert(missiles_incoming: billysbool, is_drill: billysbool, target: latlong):
  if billysand(missiles_incoming, not is_drill):
    for phone in telephony.get_all_residents(target):
      phone.send_alert("Missiles are inbound to your location")

Can you spot the bug?

[–] mathmaniac43@lemm.ee 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The conventional 'not' would not behave differently for the two non-zero values. Insidious.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Correct! I made a number of other mistakes (edited away now due to shame), but that's the one I made on purpose.

[–] kabi@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

I mean, if you have a billysbool class anyway, you'd make its truthiness correct according to bossman's scheme, and then the not operator would work correctly.