I, myself, didn't realize my inner hate for Java's String stdlib was due to booleans. Reading Java code just simply put me off and I had no idea why.
Another point in case in C and C++: your system almost always allocates a WORD (32bits on 32bit system, 64bits on a 64bit system) for creating a variable on the stack. However, did you know that with the stdlib, the range of said bool is from 0-255? That's right - it's a byte. In a typical program you are likely to allocate a lot of bools. This is a lot of wasted space in my opinion. GCC will optimize a lot of situations like if statements down to a cmov instruction. However, if you call a function that isn't a leaf function const char* formatMetric(int64_t value, bool isPercent); then you bet its just a lot of wasted stack space. What's even worse, is you get a LOT of padding situations in structures.
In a library I've developed and not released called CPO (a CLI application paradigm), you are rest assured that I use bitpacking on an int64_t (64bit systems) to ensure the density of the sheer amounts of booleans that appear in CLI applications.
Great article!
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A jumble of good points you have here.
I, myself, didn't realize my inner hate for Java's String stdlib was due to booleans. Reading Java code just simply put me off and I had no idea why.
Another point in case in C and C++: your system almost always allocates a WORD (32bits on 32bit system, 64bits on a 64bit system) for creating a variable on the stack. However, did you know that with the stdlib, the range of said bool is from 0-255? That's right - it's a byte. In a typical program you are likely to allocate a lot of bools. This is a lot of wasted space in my opinion. GCC will optimize a lot of situations like if statements down to a cmov instruction. However, if you call a function that isn't a leaf function
const char* formatMetric(int64_t value, bool isPercent);then you bet its just a lot of wasted stack space. What's even worse, is you get a LOT of padding situations in structures.In a library I've developed and not released called CPO (a CLI application paradigm), you are rest assured that I use bitpacking on an int64_t (64bit systems) to ensure the density of the sheer amounts of booleans that appear in CLI applications.
Great article!