On 4 October 2016 at 16:51, <paul.kon...@dell.com> wrote: > >> On Oct 4, 2016, at 11:46 AM, Jonathan Wakely <jwakely....@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> On 4 October 2016 at 16:41, <paul.kon...@dell.com> wrote: >>> >>>> On Oct 3, 2016, at 7:48 PM, Martin Sebor <mse...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> In a recent review Jason and I discussed the style convention >>>> commonly followed in the C++ front end to annotate arguments >>>> in calls to functions taking bool parameters with a comment >>>> along the lines of >>>> >>>> foo (1, 2, /*bar_p=*/true); >>> >>> I can't fathom why this makes any sense at all. Bool is just another data >>> type. And on top of that, "true" is obviously a value of type bool. I >>> can't imagine any reason why calls should have funny comments in them that >>> appear only for arguments of that particular type. >> >> You should get out more :-) >> >> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?UseEnumsNotBooleans >> >> https://ariya.io/2011/08/hall-of-api-shame-boolean-trap >> >> http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Replacing_Bool_Arguments_With_Enums.shtml > > > That's good stuff, but it doesn't justify putting funny comments on boolean > arguments, it argues for avoiding boolean in the first place.
Which is what I suggested several hours ago, but that requires code changes. The comments serve a similar purpose for readers looking at the call site. IMHO it's not optimal, but it has a similar goal, and from your bewilderment I assumed you were not aware of that goal. (I couldn't fathom why saying "true is obviously a value of type bool" made any sense at all in this context. Nobody suggested adding comments to clarify that "true" is of type bool.)
