Re: Is there a True Boolean type in Perl?

On 10/15/07, Doug McNutt <douglist@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> At 18:20 -0700 10/15/07, Michael Barto wrote:
> >I think in the more newer languages, they have implemented true
booleans. Perl
> >is kind of old school.
>
> use constant TRUE => 1;
> use constant FALSE => 0;
>
> Is a complete solution in perl 5.  There was once a reason back in the
time of
> grandfathered languages for booleans which actually used only one bit of
a
> precious word of memory. That would be a "true" boolean. I'll bet those
"new school"
> languages use a native word, 16 , 32, or perhaps 64 bits while arguing
that it's faster
> and better that way.

It is actually worse than you suspect.  Most of them implement boolean
types as objects (which take up more than one word).  On the plus side
they tend to be singleton objects, but the reference still takes up
(at least) a word.