[swift-evolution] [Pitch] Including yes/no in stdlib as aliases for true/false

Chris Lattner clattner at apple.com
Wed May 4 23:06:07 CDT 2016


On May 4, 2016, at 1:35 PM, Jordan Rose via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> -1 from me. We should not introduce two equivalent spellings for the same thing.

I agree with Jordan in this case.  I’m aware of the ObjC precedent, but keep in mind that that precedent was formed in the pre-ANSI-C days.  IMO, it is better to have a single way to specify a concept, rather than two identical ways.  Also, YAGNI :-)

I agree that we haven’t had a thread on this concept though!

-Chris



> Jordan
> 
> 
>> On May 4, 2016, at 12:04, Erica Sadun via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>> I propose adding yes and no to the standard library as aliases for true and false Boolean values. When answering the questions posed by Boolean properties and methods, "yes" and "no" may provide better fits than "true" and "false".  "Should this view be hidden?" "Yes!" "Does this collection contain the number 2?" "No!". Objective-C solved this by adding macro equivalents, admittedly with some attendant fuzziness because boolean implementation details allowed non 0/1 truth values. 
>> 
>> Swift on the other hand has very firm ideas about true and false. Adding yes and no literal aliases would enhance code readability with little cost. There's minimal historic support among languages for yes/no but Swift is an Apple-y kind of language and yes/no is an Apple-y kindness to developers.
>> 
>> I performed a gmane search and did not find a previous thread on this subject.
>> 
>> -- E
>> 
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