Re: zend_compare & co

> At 01:40 AM 10/6/2001 +0200, jeroen@php.net wrote: > >Can you trust on the compare functions to return either -1, 0 or 1? I don't > >think so... but since that assumption is made in various locations in PHP4, > >it maybe is true? > > I think Zend's internal compare functions where normalized a while ago. > > > >Similar question for zend booleans, can you trust the lval to be either 0 or > >1, or not? > > Yes, booleans should be 0 or 1. > > All of this doesn't meant here aren't bugs someplace :) However, I think in > general if you want to write a robust function which relies on these things > you're best off relying on the 0 being false and all the rest being true. The point is, who's responsability is it for checking wether they are normalized or not? IMO, you shouldn't trust compare and boolean function to be limited to (-1,)0,1, because it is very easy to have !=0 or ==0 in your checks, and <0 and >0. So why unnecessarily trust on -1, 0 or 1 with a greater chance on bugs? And also important, that normalization decreases performance, and for what?? About proto'ing Zend functions: where is the plan, the original scheme according to what you programmed Zend? Weren't there proto's in it? I agree with Jani that proto's is the absolute minimum of documentation that should be in a piece of software that's used by means of its API. About the 'do it yourself', I would incidentally add proto's to Zend if I could, with 'correct me if i'm wrong' tags. At least the very important information like wether or not you can trust on zend booleans to be either 1 or 0 should be clearly documented somewhere... otherwise you're asking for unnecessary bugs. You mention 'robust functions' yourself, and robust means to me that a function can be easily checked to work exactly according to its specification. Implying that there should be some kind of specificiation to start with. --Jeroen