PEP 285: Adding a bool type

[A.M. Kuchling]

In article <ualr7hmlhkemab at news.supernews.com>, John Roth wrote:
> In fact, at this point I'd like everything substantive to be defered
> to Python 3000, and get started on that right away. I've got a
> few suggestions...

It seems really unlikely that anyone will ever start with a completely
blank slate and re-implement Python from the ground up in C/C++.  Such
efforts have to rebuild absolutely everything, from the parser to the
basic data structures to all the modules, and there would be weeks and
months of work before there was anything usable again.  

Personally I'm -0 on the PEP.  I don't think it clutters things up
much, because you could get 90% of this PEP by doing
__builtin__.True=1 and __builtin__.False=0.  The major thing the PEP
adds is a new type, mostly so the repr() can return True/False instead
of 1/0, and that's nothing shocking.

On the other hand, I never write 'TRUE = 1' at the top of my modules
and am happy with just using 0/1, so this proposal wouldn't buy me
anything and wouldn't save me from any of my bugs.  <shrug>

--amk                                                             (www.amk.ca)
  "He says he doesn't know who he is or why he has come."
  "Well, I admire a man with an open mind."
    -- Ruther and Shardovan, in "Castrovalva"