Re: [RFA]: BOOL coding standards (Was: Problem with+numberWithBool: ?)

[Helge Hess]

On 02.02.2004, at 22:03, Philippe C.D.Robert wrote:
> > I think everybody understood your point on that, but no one shares it 
> > ;-) There is no Obj-C standard and the GCC implementation is *the* 
> > reference implementation we are talking about.
> Uhm, this is like saying NeXT's/Apple's ObjC runtime is the reference 
> wrt ObjC runtimes, just because there is no spec...

Yes, of course. Thats somewhat obvious, isn't it? ;-)

> > > I hope it's clear that I think a BOOL must only take YES or NO 
> > > values and
> > > that anything else is 'dubious'.
> > Yes, I think it is clear what you think. But show me a person which 
> > shares your opinion ;-)
> Well, me actually... and I guess I am not the only one.

OK ;-) I see that various people have that opinion. One more reason not 
to use gstep-base ;-)

> I am sure the BOOL "type" has been introduced because there was a need 
> for a true boolean type, unfortunately there was no such type in C 
> back then, but if a real boolean had been available in the late 80ies 
> they would have used it instead, I am pretty sure.

Well, in my interpretation it was introduced to express booleans, not 
to have a true boolean type. And nobody is questioning the usefulness 
of BOOL, in question is just the level of C compatibility.

> Besides nobody really could give good reasons yet for the existence of 
> BOOLs which take anything else than YES and NO.

Hu?! There were loads of reasons, didn't you read the posts?!

Greets
  Helge
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