Asklemmy

43970 readers

887 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

I know that naming variables is one of the biggest unsolved problems of Computer Science but how would you name a boolean flag to be self explanatory? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by linucs@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What I mean is: some boolean flags are perfect for the real world phenomenon they are representing e.g. is_light_on makes you understand perfectly that when it is true the light is on and when it is false the light is off.

There are other cases in which if you didn't write the code and you don't read any additional documentation, everything is not clear just by looking at the variable name e.g. is_person_standing, when true it's clear what that means but when false, is the person sitting? Lying? Kneeling?

I'm obviously not talking about cases in which there are more states, boolean would of course not be a good solution in those cases. I'm talking about programs in which there are only two states but it's not obvious, without external knowledge, which ones they are.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] arthur@lemmy.zip 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I would use an Enum if available in the language:

More meaningful
Extendable
Lower chance of misuse
No naming problem

[–] jbrains@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 months ago

Moreover, once you're accustomed to thinking in these terms, it becomes safer to start with a boolean, because the refactoring path is clear: replace boolean with 2-value enumeration, then expand from there.