On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 04:00:34PM +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote: > Hi, > > On Sun, 25 Jun 2006, Anand Kumria wrote: > > > Allowing 'yes' and 'no' to equal 'true' and 'false' respectively sounds > > pretty sane and user-friendly. > > > > Why wouldn't you want to do that? > > 'Cause you'd have to add "maybe", too ;-) > > Seriously, there is a subtle side to booleans, which is the reason that > they typically take on only "false" and "true": Consider the question "Is > the box not red?". If the answer is "yes", I do not know if "yes, the box > is red" or "yes, the box is not red". > > "true" and "false" are less ambiguous. "True, the box is red" and "true, the box is not red" are just as ambiguous. It is always ambiguous if you allow a qualifier. Cheers, Anand -- `When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives' -- Robert A Heinlein, "If this goes on --" - : send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html