From: "Mills Thomas (app1tam)" <app1tam@...>
Date: 2004-05-19T22:20:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Zero is true ... whoda thunk?

-> -----Original Message-----
-> From: David A. Black [mailto:dblack@wobblini.net] 
-> Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 7:40 AM
-> To: ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
-> Subject: Re: Zero is true ... whoda thunk?
-> 
-> The real world is highly overrated as a template for 
-> programming languages and the concepts underlying them.  

This statement would seem to argue for bending a language to utility, not
against utility.  And using zero as a shortcut for false is certainly
utilitarian.  If we are trying to create a language which is logically
consistent in all instances, then having a strict sense of bool-iness would
require that nothing is false but false and nothing is true but true.  So
comparing "some string" to true should result in a no-method-available
error.

But (as is the current case) using any object to be true, we've are already
bending the language to utility.  That's certainly okay (I don't have a dog
in this fight) but it's inconsistent to do that but then say, "But we just
can't use zero as false!  It's inelegant!"  We've already begun to be
inelegant if the string "This string has nothing to do with boolean" can
evaluate to true.

Drew