Remove true/false from GDB ....

Andrew Cagney
2002-02-08T23:31:59Z

Hello,

This is fallout from the recent <stdbool.h> problem.

"bfd.h" was providing ``true'' and ``false'' as convenience
enums/macros/... They unfortunatly clash with systems that provide
<stdbool.h> (a header in c99?) and even some systems that don't. The
relevant code block is:

/* I'm sure this is going to break something and someone is going to
force me to change it. */
/* typedef enum boolean {false, true} boolean; */
/* Yup, SVR4 has a "typedef enum boolean" in <sys/types.h> -fnf */
/* It gets worse if the host also defines a true/false enum... -sts */
/* And even worse if your compiler has built-in boolean types... -law */
/* And even worse if your compiler provides a stdbool.h that conflicts
with these definitions... gcc 2.95 and later do. If so, it must
be included first. -drow */
#if ...
... many valiant attemts to define true and false ...
#else
/* Use enum names that will appear nowhere else. */
typedef enum bfd_boolean {bfd_fffalse, bfd_tttrue} boolean;
#endif

In short, bfd.h should never have been polluting the name space with
``true'' and ``false''.

So the proposal is for "bfd.h" to remove all the above code and instead
just define:

typedef int bfd_boolean;

i.e. 0 is false, non-zero is true, just like C intended :-)

Problem is, some blocks of GDB make use of ``true'' and ``false'' and
they will need to be changed. Two possabilities come to mind:

#include "gdb_stdbool.h"
which would wrap <stdbool.h>

zap ``true'' and ``false''

I've strong preferences for the latter. I think BFD serves as a very
compelling example of what not to do :-)

thoughts?

I should also note that there is some urgency to this - BFD needs to be
fixed quickly - preferably before 5.2 of GDB branches.

enjoy,
Andrew