this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 184 points 1 week ago (4 children)
typedef struct {
    bool a: 1;
    bool b: 1;
    bool c: 1;
    bool d: 1;
    bool e: 1;
    bool f: 1;
    bool g: 1;
    bool h: 1;
} __attribute__((__packed__)) not_if_you_have_enough_booleans_t;
[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 week ago

You beat me to it!

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Or just std::bitset<8> for C++. Bit fields are neat though, it can store weird stuff like a 3 bit integer, packed next to booleans

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[–] [email protected] 141 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 154 points 1 week ago (15 children)

And compiler. And hardware architecture. And optimization flags.

As usual, it's some developer that knows little enough to think the walls they see around enclose the entire world.

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[–] [email protected] 135 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I set all 8 bits to 1 because I want it to be really true.

[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (12 children)

01111111 = true

11111111 = negative true = false

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

negative true = negative non-zero = non-zero = true.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago (6 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Is this quantum computing? 😜

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 1 week ago (1 children)

string boolEnable = "True";

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Maybe json is named after Jason Voorhees

[–] [email protected] 90 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Then you need to ask yourself: Performance or memory efficiency? Is it worth the extra cycles and instructions to put 8 bools in one byte and & 0x bitmask the relevant one?

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago

Sounds like a compiler problem to me. :p

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wait till you find out about alignment and padding

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Tell me the truth, i can handle it

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Back in the day when it mattered, we did it like

#define BV00		(1 <<  0)
#define BV01		(1 <<  1)
#define BV02		(1 <<  2)
#define BV03		(1 <<  3)
...etc

#define IS_SET(flag, bit)	((flag) & (bit))
#define SET_BIT(var, bit)	((var) |= (bit))
#define REMOVE_BIT(var, bit)	((var) &= ~(bit))
#define TOGGLE_BIT(var, bit)	((var) ^= (bit))

....then...
#define MY_FIRST_BOOLEAN BV00
SET_BIT(myFlags, MY_FIRST_BOOLEAN)

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

The 8-bit Intel 8051 family provides a dedicated bit-addressable memory space (addresses 20h-2Fh in internal RAM), giving 128 directly addressable bits. Used them for years. I'd imagine many microcontrollers have bit-width variables.

bit myFlag = 0;

Or even return from a function:

bit isValidInput(unsigned char input) { // Returns true (1) if input is valid, false (0) otherwise return (input >= '0' && input <= '9'); }

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago (8 children)

In the industrial automation world and most of the IT industry, data is aligned to the nearest word. Depending on architecture, that's usually either 16, 32, or 64 bits. And that's the space a single Boolean takes.

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