Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes
by jjgreen on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @04:55AM
(#48989768)
Possible application: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/What_Is_Truth_0x3f_
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Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes
by benj111 on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @04:59AM
(#48989789)
Off the top of my head. Compilers. You may know that a value has known 1s and 0s and unknowns. This would allow you to represent that for optimisation purposes.
Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes
by Imustaskforhelp on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @06:36AM
(#48990469)
Arturo[0] language supports true,false and maybe. I really liked that idea actually, worth mentioning here.
so valid arturo code can be like (picked from their in-a-nutshell documentation)
i1: true
i2: false
i3: maybe
Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes
by taneq on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @07:45AM
(#48990982)
Everyone hates null but (in database land, and arguably in other programming) it just means “no data.”
(As an aside, I found the characterisation of null as being a “billion dollar mistake” to be unfair. Those who don’t acknowledge null are doomed to reimplement it, probably poorly, or to have the unknowns in their logic remain unknown unknowns.)
Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes
by mcherm on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @08:33AM
(#48991507)
The "mistake" was not in providing a way to represent "no data", it was in providing no way to represent "this definitely HAS" data.
Languages that correct the problem have two separate types (eg: Foo & Option<Foo>) meaning "definitely a Foo" and "a Foo but it might have no data". Java just has Foo, meaning "a Foo but it might have no data" but no way to represent "definitely a Foo".
Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes
by mi_lk on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @05:04AM
(#48989819)
Had a good chuckle
Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes
by abcd_f on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @06:49AM
(#48990578)
If it weren't for Bool as a name, that's just 0 for OK, non-zero for errors with 1 being general failure.
Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes
by inigyou on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @09:20AM
(#48991962)
TDWTF code is usually hyperbolized. It might not have been called Bool.
Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes
by WorldMaker on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @01:15PM
(#49010081)
But also it could have been found in the wild in C/C++ code, which both had no "native" Boolean type until surprisingly recently (C++17 and C23! as in 2017 and 2023 standards, irrespectively) so Bool is very much a possible real name and not part of the hyperbole.
Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes
by woadwarrior01 on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @08:33AM
(#48991502)
I've seen this pattern repeated in a number of large production codebases using optional booleans.