Re: [boost] Ternary logic programming

Subject: Re: [boost] Ternary logic programming
From: Paul Long (plong_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-07-02 00:23:02

On 7/1/2015 7:49 PM, Niall Douglas wrote:
> Out of interest, what do you think of my free function ternary logic
> programming:
>
> tribool t;
> if(true_(t)) { /* true */ }
> else if(false_(t)) { /* false */ }
> else if(unknown(t)) { /* other state */ }
>
> Nobody here seemed to like it. I am looking for something the average
> programmer will notice immediately and not accidentally assume it's
> boolen logic going on here.

I'm jumping in in the middle of this thread, but are you purposefully 
naming the value--true, false, unknown--to make the programmer more 
aware of the ternary logic? Otherwise, one could do the following, which 
boost::tribool supports (I'm probably stating the obvious; please 
forgive me):

tribool t;
if (t) { /* true */ }
else if (!t) { /* false */ }
else {  /* unknown */ }

This reminds me of the original three-way IF statement in FORTRAN, 
except it was an arithmetic test for less-than, equal-to, and 
greater-than zero. Oh, and it was sort of a computed goto, so there's 
that. This is what it looked (looks?) like:

IF (N) LTLABEL, EQLABEL, GTLABEL

I suppose the literal translation to ternary logic and C++ would be 
something like this:

if (t) true_statement; else false_statement; else unknown_statement;

Yes, two else's! One would have to be careful with the curly braces, as 
always, but I don't think this would be ambiguous if added to the 
grammar. Or how about introducing a new keyword, such as "otherwise?" 
That should be enough to tip off a programming that they're not in 
Kansas anymore:

if (t) true_statement; else false_statement; otherwise unknown_statement;

And how about a quaternary operator while we're at it?

t ? true_expression : false_expression : unknown_expression

Paul