Henning Thielemann wrote:
On Thu, 31 May 2007, Paul Hudak wrote:
PR Stanley wrote:
I think so, too. In Boolean algebra (which predates computers, much less C), FALSE has traditionally been associated with 0, and TRUE with 1. And since 1 > 0, TRUE > FALSE. The question, however, still remains: why False = 0 and True 1? I appreciate that it's so in boolean algebra but why? Why not True = 0 and False = 1? Because if you take (&&) to be (*), and (||) to be (+), you get a homomorphism between the two resulting algebras (assuming 1+1 = 1).
It seems however, that if the number representations of False and True are flipped, then we only need to flip the interpretations of (&&) and (||). For me the choice fromEnum False == 0 && fromEnum True == 1 seems rather arbitrary.
It -is- arbitrary, in boolean algebra as well. not is an automorphism between the two. However, we tend to think of 0 as associated with nothing/the empty set and that maps naturally to {x | False}. There are intuitive reasons why this choice was chosen, but no formal reasons. Obviously, there are pragmatic reasons to use this choice in programming languages, e.g. many languages use 0 to represent false and non-zero or 1 to represent true and this is consistent with that.