Re: The nature of truth

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Chris Dean wrote:

> In this lucky case it happens to be our code doing some JDBC transforms
> so it's easy enough to change.  The real annoyance is the the Java
> Boolean constructors exists at all (this has irritated me for years,
> grrr).

The JDK 1.4.0 docs say (in boldface) about Boolean(boolean):

Note: It is rarely appropriate to use this constructor. Unless a new 
instance is required, the static factory valueOf(boolean) is generally a 
better choice. It is likely to yield significantly better space and time 
performance.

There isn't the same note for Boolean(Sting), though.


> Anyway, the docs basically say what to expect:
>
>     The type `boolean' matches any object, and the result is `false' if
>     and only if the actual argument is `#f'.
>
> I suggest we extend this and say that #f corresponds to Boolean.FALSE
> and #t corresponds to Boolean.TRUE.

I'll mention that in the manual.
--
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/