logoalt Hacker News

ralferootoday at 5:37 PM2 repliesview on HN

True | False | FileNotFound was a meme about 2 decades ago, and even that was a reference to MSDOS from another 2 decades earlier. I guess things never change, only the language.

Even now, I still find myself using true/false/null on occasions, but I'm usually smart enough to replace it with an enum at that point. The only time I don't is when it's an optional parameter to a function to override some default/existing value, at which point it then makes sense to keep it as an optional bool.


Replies

hinkleytoday at 5:43 PM

I did a govt contract early on and learned that yes/no/unanswered/unasked was a common quad. I see that in disclosures when applying for jobs as well.

gizmo686today at 5:42 PM

I'm surprised that trinary logic has not become a standard part of standard libraries yet. Almost every project I have worked on ends up with some form of a yes/no/maybe abstraction.

show 2 replies