[Haskell-cafe] Unnecessarily strict implementations

Alexander Solla ajs at 2piix.com
Thu Sep 2 19:58:38 EDT 2010


On Sep 2, 2010, at 9:10 AM, Stephen Sinclair wrote:

> Sorry to go a bit off topic, but I find it funny that I never really
> noticed you could perform less-than or greater-than comparisons on
> Bool values.  What's the semantic reasoning behind allowing relative
> comparisons on booleans?  In what context would you use it?

The Boolean values form a Boolean lattice.  That's reason enough.

> It seems
> to me a throwback to C's somewhat arbitrary assumption that False=0
> and True=1.

That's not arbitrary at all. 0 and 1 are very special numbers, because  
of the roles they play in addition and multiplication.  They "absorb"  
and "identify" things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra_(structure)
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