Yeah, but it's a shame that almost every language gets it wrong (and even traditional presentation of mathematical logic) and uses zero as representation of FALSE. It should represent TRUE!
while(p) {
// do something with p
...
p = p->next;
}
if(err=foo()) {
printf("Error %d occurred\n", err);
...
}That would make it slightly easier to do things like memset()'ing a vector of boolean, or a struct containing a boolean like in this case. Backwards compatibility with pre-_Bool boolean expressions in C99 probably made that a non starter in any case.
Converting a 1-bit integer to a byte-sized or word-sized integer, by using the same extension rules as for any other size (i.e. by using either sign extension or zero extension), yields as the converted value for "true" either "1" for the unsigned integer interpretation or the value with all ones (i.e. "-1") for the signed integer interpretation.
So you could have "unsigned bool" and "signed bool", exactly like you have "unsigned char" and "signed char", to choose between the 2 possible representations.
Historical note: this was the case in QBasic, where true was defined as -1.
However when the use of Boolean algebra is embedded in some bigger theories, there are cases when the mapping to 0 and 1 becomes mandatory, e.g. in relationship with the theory of probabilities or with the theory of binary polynomials, where the logical operations can be mapped to arithmetic or algebraic operations.
The mapping to 0 and 1 is fully exploited in APL and its derivatives, where it enables the concise writing of many kinds of conditional expressions (in a similar manner to how mask registers are used in GPUs and in AVX-512).
Yes? That's precisely what I meant when I said that the traditional presentation of mathematical logic get it wrong: it assigns 0 to FALSE and 1 to TRUE, but it can be done other way around.