Code Smell 24 - Boolean Coercions
Booleans should be just True and False
11 November, 2022
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Contributors
Booleans should be just True and False
TL;DR: Don't do magic castings to boolean. You will regret it on a Friday night.
Problems
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Hiding Errors
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Accidental complexity coupled to one particular language.
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Readability
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Difficulty to hop among languages.
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Solutions
1.
Be explicit.
2.
Work with booleans for boolean conditions. Not integers, not nulls, not strings, not lists. Just booleans.
Sample Code
Wrong
Right
Detection
This is a language feature. Some strict languages show warnings with this magic wizardry.
Tags
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Coercions
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Primitive
Conclusion
Some languages encourage doing some magic abbreviations and automatic castings. This is a source of errors and a Premature Optimization warning.
We should always be as explicit as possible.
Relations
More Info
It is not the language that makes programs appear simple. It is the programmer that make the language appear simple!
Robert Martin
This article is part of the Code Smell Series.