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

submitted 3 months ago by crimsonpoodle@pawb.social to c/programming@programming.dev

5 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!

all 6 comments

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[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

My boss insisted, before I arrived at the company, that everything in the database be coded so that 1 = Yes and 2 = No, because that's the way he likes to think of it. It causes us daily pain.

[–] forrcaho@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months 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 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 3 months 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.