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alberto-m
7 days ago
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The Little Bool of Doom (2025)
> one could make the case for true being all bits set
Historical note: this was the case in QBasic, where true was defined as -1.
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Joker_vD
6 days ago
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There, apparently, were quite a number of ISAs where checking the sign bit was more convenient (performant?) than checking (in)equality with zero.
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jabl
6 days ago
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Some Fortran compilers also did this. MS Powerstation Fortran at least, IIRC.
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Historical note: this was the case in QBasic, where true was defined as -1.