[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [Patch] Bool cleanup of client/

[Mike Kaufman <kaufman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2002 at 05:59:56PM +0000, Ben Webb wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2002 at 06:41:02PM +0100, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> > On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Raimar Falke wrote:
> > >  - replaces gboolean with bool
> > 
> > Uh-huh, is this a good idea? If you define bool to a different size than
> > the gnomes do, won't this possibly cause some very hard to find breakages?
> 
>       It seems strange to me, conceptually, to pass "bool"s to functions
> that are prototyped to take "gboolean"s.

especially if those functions passed back something > sizeof(char) to
signify 1.

> 
> > So you have settled on char for bool? I think this is a bad idea. Modern
> > CPUs don't like 8bit types much.
> 
>       In my opinion, if it's really going to make that much difference,
> the change needs to be tested on as many architectures as possible, since
> (as I seem to recall being pointed out already) whether "char" is faster
> than "int" tends to be machine-specific. This would, presumably, require
> a configure test, and this seems like a lot of work for something with a
> possibly negligible performance improvement.

ugh. I should have made my point earlier before Raimar did a lot of work,
but I'm not so hot on this whole idea. I do like using bool for variables
and return values and such because it gives immediate feedback to the
developer what kind of value he should expect, even if the compiler treats
it no differently than an int (you can also more quickly discern what a
function is doing); however, what I don't like is the sort of stuff going on 
in options.c for example, where variables are cloned, structs are expanded 
and lots of switch statements, cruft, etc are added for negative tangible
benefit.

-mike

> 
>       Ben
> -- 
> ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx           http://bellatrix.pcl.ox.ac.uk/~ben/
> "And the man with the golden gun thinks he knows so much"