Re: lcc first experience

In article
<74eb4410-6216-4126-aa9b-fdba6755d6f2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Spiros Bousbouras  <spibou@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>Common Lisp also works this way albeit there the comparison is with
>the empty list rather than zero:
>
>(if x (print "True") (print "False"))
>
>will print True if x is not the empty list and False if it is the
>empty list.

Traditional Lisps are rather like C in this regard.  They have a value
that is commonly used as a terminator or null value that is the same
as the value interpreted as false.  In C, strings are terminated with
0 and null pointers are treated as false.  In traditional Lisps, nil
and the empty list are the same, and are false.

It's more or less inevitable that a language without an explicit boolean
(or "logical") type will work like this, and even some with a boolean
type have an implicit conversion from numeric zeros, empty sets, and
so on.

-- Richard

-- 
:wq