From: Jamis Buck <jgb3@...>
Date: 2004-05-20T02:00:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Zero is true ... whoda thunk?

Ben Giddings wrote:
> Converting numbers to boolean values is a problem-specific issue, and 
> shouldn't have a general case.  What's so difficult about using tests 
> like (foo == 0) and (foo > 0) anyhow?

Beautiful and well-thought-out explanation. Thanks!

I've had to fight uphill against people that want 0 to mean false for a 
long time. The absolute WORST abuse of 0==false is with strcmp in C 
(which we use extensively at work):

   if( !strcmp( string1, string2 ) ) { ... }

I'm SO glad that Ruby forces you to compare numbers explicitly, instead 
of implicitly converting to bool. It makes code that much more readable.

-- 
Jamis Buck
jgb3@email.byu.edu
http://www.jamisbuck.org/jamis

ruby -h | ruby -e 
'a=[];readlines.join.scan(/-(.)\[e|Kk(\S*)|le.l(..)e|#!(\S*)/) {|r| a << 
r.compact.first };puts "\n>#{a.join(%q/ /)}<\n\n"'