Related
I stumbled upon the following construction in C++:
bool result = false;
for(int i = 0; i<n; i++){
result |= TryAndDoSomething(i);
}
I supposed that this |= was a shortcut for the OR operator, and that result would equal true in the end if at least one of these calls to TryAndDoSomething had returned true.
But now I am wondering if more than one call can actually return true. Indeed if we extend the operation as:
result = result || TryAndDoSomething(i);
Then the method will be called only if return evaluated to false, that is, if no other call before returned true. Thus after one call returning true, no other call will be done.
Is this the correct interpretation?
It's bitwise OR assignment, not short-circuited OR evaluation.
It is equivalent to:
result = result | TryAndDoSomething(i);
Not:
result = result || TryAndDoSomething(i);
On booleans, | yields the same result as ||, but doesn't short-circuit. The right operand of |= is always evaluated.
The only difference in this context between x |= f() (bitwise OR) and x = x || f() (logical OR) is that the latter is short-circuiting. In the former, f() will be executed n times—unless of course f() throws an exception, but that’s another story.
In the || version, f() will no longer be called once x becomes true. C++ does not have a ||= operator, but it is important to understand that |= and ||= (if it existed) would have different semantics because of this. |= is not just a replacement for the missing ||=.
As a side note, provided you are using bool, the bitwise operation is safe, because the standard specifies that true and false convert to the integers 1 and 0, respectively. So the only difference in this case is eager versus lazy evaluation.
result |= Try() is short for result = result | Try();. The || operator you seem to understand, but the | operator is quite different. It's name is bitwise or (as opposed to logical or). It has the same affect as if it performed a=a||b on each bit of the operands, and doesnt have the quick-bailout thing that logical and/or have. (It's also crazy fast; as fast or faster than addition). The other bitwise operations are & (bitwise and: a=a&&b on each bit), and ^ (bitwise xor: a=(a!=b) on each bit).
& has &&. | has ||. Why doesn't ^ have ^^?
I understand that it wouldn't be short-circuiting, but it would have different semantics. In C, true is really any non-zero value. Bitwise XOR is not always the same thing as logical XOR:
int a=strcmp(str1,str2);// evaluates to 1, which is "true"
int b=strcmp(str1,str3);// evaluates to 2, which is also "true"
int c=a ^^ b; // this would be false, since true ^ true = false
int d=a ^ b; //oops, this is true again, it is 3 (^ is bitwise)
Since you can't always rely on a true value being 1 or -1, wouldn't a ^^ operator be very helpful? I often have to do strange things like this:
if(!!a ^ !!b) // looks strange
Dennis Ritchie answers
There are both historical and practical reasons why there is no ^^ operator.
The practical is: there's not much use for the operator. The main point of && and || is to take advantage of their short-circuit evaluation not only for efficiency reasons, but more often for expressiveness and correctness.
[...]
By contrast, an ^^ operator would always force evaluation of both arms of the expression, so there's no efficiency gain. Furthermore, situations in which ^^ is really called for are pretty rare, though examples can be created. These situations get rarer and stranger as you stack up the operator--
if (cond1() ^^ cond2() ^^ cond3() ^^ ...) ...
does the consequent exactly when an odd number of the condx()s are true. By contrast, the && and || analogs remain fairly plausible and useful.
Technically, one already exists:
a != b
since this will evaluate to true if the truth value of the operands differ.
Edit:
Volte's comment:
(!a) != (!b)
is correct because my answer above does not work for int types. I will delete mine if he adds his answer.
Edit again:
Maybe I'm forgetting something from C++, but the more I think about this, the more I wonder why you would ever write if (1 ^ 2) in the first place. The purpose for ^ is to exclusive-or two numbers together (which evaluates to another number), not convert them to boolean values and compare their truth values.
This seems like it would be an odd assumption for a language designer to make.
For non-bool operands, I guess what you would want is for a ^^ b to be evaluated as:
(a != 0) ^ (b != 0)
Well, you have the above option and you have a few options listed in other answers.
The operator ^^ would be redundant for bool operands. Talking only about boolean operands, for the sake of argument, let's pretend that ^ was bitwise-only and that ^^ existed as a logical XOR. You then have these choices:
& - Bitwise AND -- always evaluates both operands
&& - Logical AND -- does not always evaluate both operands
| - Bitwise OR -- always evaluates both operands
|| - Logical OR -- does not always evaluate both operands
^ - Bitwise XOR -- must always evaluate both operands
^^ - Logical XOR -- must always evaluate both operands
Why didn't they create ^^ to essentially convert numerical values into bools and then act as ^? That's a good question. Perhaps because it's more potentially confusing than && and ||, perhaps because you can easily construct the equivalent of ^^ with other operators.
I can't say what was in the heads of Kernighan and Ritchie when they invented C, but you made a brief reference to "wouldn't be short-circuiting", and I'm guessing that's the reason: It's not possible to implement it consistently. You can't short-circuit XOR like you can AND and OR, so ^^ could not fully parallel && and ||. So the authors might well have decided that making an operation that sort of kind of looks like its parallel to the others but isn't quite would be worse than not having it at all.
Personally, the main reason I use && and || is for the short-circuit rather than the non-bitwise. Actually I very rarely use the bitwise operators at all.
Another workaround to the ones posted above (even if it requires another branch in the code) would be:
if ( (a? !b : b ) )
that is equivalent to xor.
In Java the ^ operator indeed does do logical XOR when used on two boolean operands (just like & and | in Java do non-short-circuiting logical AND and OR, respectively, when applied to booleans). The main difference with C / C++ is that C / C++ allows you to mix integers and booleans, whereas Java doesn't.
But I think it's bad practice to use integers as booleans anyway. If you want to do logical operations, you should stick to either bool values, or integers that are either 0 or 1. Then ^ works fine as logical XOR.
An analogous question would be to ask, how would you do non-short-circuiting logical AND and OR in C / C++? The usual answer is to use the & and | operators respectively. But again, this depends on the values being bool or either 0 or 1. If you allow any integer values, then this does not work either.
Regardless of the case for or against ^^ as an operator, you example with strcmp() sucks. It does not return a truth value (true or false), it returns a relation between its inputs, encoded as an integer.
Sure, any integer can be interpreted as a truth value in C, in which case 0 is "false" and all other values are "true", but that is the opposite of what strcmp() returns.
Your example should begin:
int a = strcmp(str1, str2) == 0; // evaluates to 0, which is "false"
int b = strcmp(str1, str3) == 0; // evaluates to 0, which is also "false"
You must compare the return value with 0 to convert it to a proper boolean value indicating if the strings were equal or not.
With "proper" booleans, represented canonically as 0 or 1, the bitwise ^ operator works a lot better, too ...
tl;dr: Is there a non-short circuit logical AND in C++ (similar to &&)?
I've got 2 functions that I want to call, and use the return values to figure out the return value of a 3rd composite function. The issue is that I always want both functions to evaluate (as they output log information about the state of the system)
IE:
bool Func1(int x, int y){
if( x > y){
cout << "ERROR- X > Y" << endl;
}
}
bool Func2(int z, int q){
if( q * 3 < z){
cout << "ERROR- Q < Z/3" << endl;
}
}
bool Func3(int x, int y, int z, int q){
return ( Func1(x, y) && Func2(z, q) );
}
Of course, the conditionals aren't quite that simple in the functions, and yes, I realize that I could use temporary variables to store the returns of the two functions and then do the "short-circuit" logic on the temporary variables, but I was wondering if there was an "elegant" language solution to keep the one-line return in Func3 while still getting the logging messages from both functions.
Summary of responses:
The "bitwise" operators | and & can be used to get the effect, but only if the return type is bool. I found no mention of this in the ANSI C++ spec. From what I can tell, this works because the "bool" is converted to an int (true = 1, false = 0), and then the bitwise operator is used, then it is converted back to a bool.
The Operators "+" and "*" can also be used. This is not mentioned in the ANSI C++ Spec, but probably works because of the same reason as above. "+" give "or" because true is converted to 1, and then anything other than 0 is converted back to true. "*" works for "and" because 1 (true) * 0 (false) == 0(false) and 1(true) * 1(true) == 1(true)
Both of these seem to rely on implicit type conversion to integer and then back to bool. Both of these will likely mess up whomever tries to maintain the code.
Other responses boil down to "Just use temporaries" or "Implement your own" which was not the question. The goal was to see if there was already an operator implemented in the C++ standard to do it.
The & operator performs logical "and" operation for bool operands and is not short circuited.
It's not a sequence point. You cannot rely on the order of evaluation of the operands. However, it's guaranteed that both operands are evaluated.
I do not recommend doing this. Using temporary variables is a better solution. Don't sacrifice readability for "clever code".
and yes, I realize that I could use temporary variables to store the returns of the two functions and then do the "short-circuit" logic on the temporary variables, but I was wondering if there was an "elegant" language solution to keep the one-line return in Func3 while still getting the logging messages from both functions.
That would be the "elegant" solution :). Relying on the side effects of the evaluation order would be far from elegant, error prone, and hard to understand for the next developer who wanders into your project. Relying on the side effects of course contrasts with something like the following snippet, which is a completely logical and valid use case for relying on evaluation order alone:
if ( obj != NULL && obj->foo == blah ) { /* do stuff */ }
Yes there are built in operators for doing this.
+ does a non short circuiting OR and * does an AND. ☺
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
void print(bool b)
{
cout << boolalpha << b << endl;
}
int main()
{
print(true + false);
print(true * false);
}
Output:
true
false
You can trivially write your own.
bool LongCircuitAnd( bool term1, bool term2 ) { return term1 && term2; }
bool Func3(int x, int y, int z, int q){
return LongCircuitAnd( Func1(x,y), Func2(z,q) );
And if you want to be very fancy, you could even inline it!!!
Okay, Okay, if you really really don't want the terrible overhead of calling a function.
bool Func3(int x, int y, int z, int q){
return ((int)Func1(x,y)) * ((int)Func2(z,q));
But I don't consider that elegant. It its conceivable that an overly smart compiler could short circuit this...
If you want to use the temporary variables, but keep the return to a single statement, you could use the comma operator:
return (b1=Func1()), (b2=Func2()), (b1&&b2);
The comma operator forces a sequence point, so each one evaluates its left operand, discards the result, then evaluates its right operand.
Another possibility, but one I'd tend to recommend against, would be for the two functions to return a type that overloads the '&&' operator. Since an overloaded operator invokes a function, it always evaluates both operands, even in cases (like &&) where the built-in operator does not -- usually that's something of a problem, but in this case it's exactly what you want:
class mybool {
bool value;
public:
bool operator&&(mybool const &other) const {
return value && other.value;
}
};
mybool Func1(int, int);
mybool Func2(int, int);
bool Func3(int x, int y, int z, int q) {
return Func1(x, y) && Func2(z,q);
}
While this works, it seems to me like it's just a bit too "clever" -- something that wouldn't be at all obvious to most readers. A different name for mybool might help, but offhand I can't think of one that reflects the intent very well without becoming so verbose it would be a net loss.
Yes. The overloaded versions of operator&& and operator|| do not short-circuit — they evaluate both operands even if the left-hand operand "determines" the outcome... (Source)
That being said, don't overload operator&& or operator||. Be nice to your maintenance programmers who will look at && or || and assume that they do short circuit.
A near-universal but often undocumented non-Standard operator was introduced for exactly this purpose, pioneered by GCC alongside x ?: y (x if non-zero else y), and the now sadly removed >? and <? min/max operators and their compound assignment forms (see http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Deprecated-Features.html). Sadly, with & and && already in use, they seem to have been scraping the bottom of the barrel to find an appropriate character sequence, but that's just my opinion - would welcome any historical explanations for why this might have been chosen.
So, while it's not currently as well known as many other operators, the >! operator (properly but boringly called "long-circuit and", but colloquially "bigger knot" by those in the know) was added by most C and C++ compilers (include GCC and even MSVC++) to satisfy this requirement:
bool f1() { ... }
bool f2() { ... }
...
bool f3() { return f1() >! f2(); }
Do take it for a spin ;-).
[This question is related to but not the same as this one.]
If I try to use values of certain types as boolean expressions, I get a warning. Rather than suppress the warning, I sometimes use the ternary operator (?:) to convert to a bool. Using two not operators (!!) seems to do the same thing.
Here's what I mean:
typedef long T; // similar warning with void * or double
T t = 0;
bool b = t; // performance warning: forcing 'long' value to 'bool'
b = t ? true : false; // ok
b = !!t; // any different?
So, does the double-not technique really do the same thing? Is it any more or less safe than the ternary technique? Is this technique equally safe with non-integral types (e.g., with void * or double for T)?
I'm not asking if !!t is good style. I am asking if it is semantically different than t ? true : false.
The argument of the ! operator and the first argument of the ternary operator are both implicitly converted to bool, so !! and ?: are IMO silly redundant decorations of the cast. I vote for
b = (t != 0);
No implicit conversions.
Alternatively, you can do this: bool b = (t != 0)
Careful!
A boolean is about truth and falseness.
An integer is about whole numbers.
Those are very distinct concepts:
Truth and falseness is about deciding stuff.
Numbers are about counting stuff.
When bridging those concepts, it should be done explicitly. I like Dima's version best:
b = (t != 0);
That code clearly says: Compare two numbers and store the truth-value in a boolean.
All valid techniques, all will generate the same code.
Personally, I just disable the warning so I can use the cleanest syntax. Casting to a bool is not something I'm worried about doing accidentally.
Yes it is safe.
0 is interpreted as false, everthing else is true,
hence !5 comes out as a false
!0 comes out as true
so !!5 comes out as true
I would not use:
bool b = !!t;
That is the least readable way (and thus the hardest to maintain)
The others depend on the situation.
If you are converting to use in a bool expression only.
bool b = t ? true : false;
if (b)
{
doSomething();
}
Then I would let the language do it for you:
if (t)
{
doSomething();
}
If you are actually storing a boolean value. Then first I would wonder why you have a long in the first places that requires the cast. Assuming you need the long and the bool value I would consider all the following depending on the situation.
bool b = t ? true : false; // Short and too the point.
// But not everybody groks this especially beginners.
bool b = (t != 0); // Gives the exact meaning of what you want to do.
bool b = static_cast<bool>(t); // Implies that t has no semantic meaning
// except as a bool in this context.
Summary:
Use what provides the most meaning for the context you are in.
Try and make it obvious what you are doing
I recommend never suppressing that warning, and never using a c cast (bool) to suppress it. The conversions may not always be called as you assume.
There is a difference between an expression that evaluates to true and a boolean of that value.
Both !! and ternary take getting used to, but will do the job similarly, if you do not want to define internal types with overloaded casts to bool.
Dima's approach is fine too, since it assigns the value of an expression to a bool.
If you're worried about the warning, you can also force the cast: bool b = (bool)t;
I really hate !!t!!!!!!. It smacks of the worst thing about C and C++, the temptation to be too clever by half with your syntax.
bool b(t != 0); // Is the best way IMHO, it explicitly shows what is happening.
Comparison to 0 doesn't work so well.
Which comes back -- why !! vs. ternary?
class foo { public: explicit operator bool () ; };
foo f;
auto a = f != 0; // invalid operands to binary expression ('foo' and 'int')
auto b = f ? true : false; // ok
auto c = !!f; // ok
!! may be compact, but I think it is unnecessarily complicated. Better to disable the warning or use the ternary operator, in my opinion.
I would use b = (0 != t) -- at least any sane person can read it easily. If I would see double dang in the code, I would be pretty much surprised.
Disable the warning.
Write for clarity first; then profile; then optimize for speed, where required.
!! is only useful when you're using a boolean expression in arithmetic fashion, e.g.:
c = 3 + !!extra; //3 or 4
(Whose style is a different discussion.) When all you need is a boolean expression, the !! is redundant. Writing
bool b = !!extra;
makes as much sense as:
if (!!extra) { ... }
I recommend to use
if (x != 0)
or
if (x != NULL)
instead of if(x); it's more understandable and readable.
The double not feels funny to me and in debug code will be very different than in optimized code.
If you're in love with !! you could always Macro it.
#define LONGTOBOOL(x) (!!(x))
(as an aside, the ternary operator is what I favor in these cases)
I would use bool b = t and leave the compile warning in, commenting on this particular line's safety. Disabling the warning may bite you in the butt in another part of the code.
Is there any reason not to use the bitwise operators &, |, and ^ for "bool" values in C++?
I sometimes run into situations where I want exactly one of two conditions to be true (XOR), so I just throw the ^ operator into a conditional expression. I also sometimes want all parts of a condition to be evaluated whether the result is true or not (rather than short-circuiting), so I use & and |. I also need to accumulate Boolean values sometimes, and &= and |= can be quite useful.
I've gotten a few raised eyebrows when doing this, but the code is still meaningful and cleaner than it would be otherwise. Is there any reason NOT to use these for bools? Are there any modern compilers that give bad results for this?
|| and && are boolean operators and the built-in ones are guaranteed to return either true or false. Nothing else.
|, & and ^ are bitwise operators. When the domain of numbers you operate on is just 1 and 0, then they are exactly the same, but in cases where your booleans are not strictly 1 and 0 – as is the case with the C language – you may end up with some behavior you didn't want. For instance:
BOOL two = 2;
BOOL one = 1;
BOOL and = two & one; //and = 0
BOOL cand = two && one; //cand = 1
In C++, however, the bool type is guaranteed to be only either a true or a false (which convert implicitly to respectively 1 and 0), so it's less of a worry from this stance, but the fact that people aren't used to seeing such things in code makes a good argument for not doing it. Just say b = b && x and be done with it.
Two main reasons. In short, consider carefully; there could be a good reason for it, but if there is be VERY explicit in your comments because it can be brittle and, as you say yourself, people aren't generally used to seeing code like this.
Bitwise xor != Logical xor (except for 0 and 1)
Firstly, if you are operating on values other than false and true (or 0 and 1, as integers), the ^ operator can introduce behavior not equivalent to a logical xor. For example:
int one = 1;
int two = 2;
// bitwise xor
if (one ^ two)
{
// executes because expression = 3 and any non-zero integer evaluates to true
}
// logical xor; more correctly would be coded as
// if (bool(one) != bool(two))
// but spelled out to be explicit in the context of the problem
if ((one && !two) || (!one && two))
{
// does not execute b/c expression = ((true && false) || (false && true))
// which evaluates to false
}
Credit to user #Patrick for expressing this first.
Order of operations
Second, |, &, and ^, as bitwise operators, do not short-circuit. In addition, multiple bitwise operators chained together in a single statement -- even with explicit parentheses -- can be reordered by optimizing compilers, because all 3 operations are normally commutative. This is important if the order of the operations matters.
In other words
bool result = true;
result = result && a() && b();
// will not call a() if result false, will not call b() if result or a() false
will not always give the same result (or end state) as
bool result = true;
result &= (a() & b());
// a() and b() both will be called, but not necessarily in that order in an
// optimizing compiler
This is especially important because you may not control methods a() and b(), or somebody else may come along and change them later not understanding the dependency, and cause a nasty (and often release-build only) bug.
The raised eyebrows should tell you enough to stop doing it. You don't write the code for the compiler, you write it for your fellow programmers first and then for the compiler. Even if the compilers work, surprising other people is not what you want - bitwise operators are for bit operations not for bools.
I suppose you also eat apples with a fork? It works but it surprises people so it's better not to do it.
I think
a != b
is what you want
Disadvantages of the bitlevel operators.
You ask:
“Is there any reason not to use the bitwise operators &, |, and ^ for "bool" values in C++? ”
Yes, the logical operators, that is the built-in high level boolean operators !, && and ||, offer the following advantages:
Guaranteed conversion of arguments to bool, i.e. to 0 and 1 ordinal value.
Guaranteed short circuit evaluation where expression evaluation stops as soon as the final result is known.
This can be interpreted as a tree-value logic, with True, False and Indeterminate.
Readable textual equivalents not, and and or, even if I don't use them myself.
As reader Antimony notes in a comment also the bitlevel operators have alternative tokens, namely bitand, bitor, xor and compl, but in my opinion these are less readable than and, or and not.
Simply put, each such advantage of the high level operators is a disadvantage of the bitlevel operators.
In particular, since the bitwise operators lack argument conversion to 0/1 you get e.g. 1 & 2 → 0, while 1 && 2 → true. Also ^, bitwise exclusive or, can misbehave in this way. Regarded as boolean values 1 and 2 are the same, namely true, but regarded as bitpatterns they're different.
How to express logical either/or in C++.
You then provide a bit of background for the question,
“I sometimes run into situations where I want exactly one of two conditions to be true (XOR), so I just throw the ^ operator into a conditional expression.”
Well, the bitwise operators have higher precedence than the logical operators. This means in particular that in a mixed expression such as
a && b ^ c
you get the perhaps unexpected result a && (b ^ c).
Instead write just
(a && b) != c
expressing more concisely what you mean.
For the multiple argument either/or there is no C++ operator that does the job. For example, if you write a ^ b ^ c than that is not an expression that says “either a, b or c is true“. Instead it says, “An odd number of a, b and c are true“, which might be 1 of them or all 3…
To express the general either/or when a, b and c are of type bool, just write
(a + b + c) == 1
or, with non-bool arguments, convert them to bool:
(!!a + !!b + !!c) == 1
Using &= to accumulate boolean results.
You further elaborate,
“I also need to accumulate Boolean values sometimes, and &= and |=? can be quite useful.”
Well, this corresponds to checking whether respectively all or any condition is satisfied, and de Morgan’s law tells you how to go from one to the other. I.e. you only need one of them. You could in principle use *= as a &&=-operator (for as good old George Boole discovered, logical AND can very easily be expressed as multiplication), but I think that that would perplex and perhaps mislead maintainers of the code.
Consider also:
struct Bool
{
bool value;
void operator&=( bool const v ) { value = value && v; }
operator bool() const { return value; }
};
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
using namespace std;
Bool a = {true};
a &= true || false;
a &= 1234;
cout << boolalpha << a << endl;
bool b = {true};
b &= true || false;
b &= 1234;
cout << boolalpha << b << endl;
}
Output with Visual C++ 11.0 and g++ 4.7.1:
true
false
The reason for the difference in results is that the bitlevel &= does not provide a conversion to bool of its right hand side argument.
So, which of these results do you desire for your use of &=?
If the former, true, then better define an operator (e.g. as above) or named function, or use an explicit conversion of the right hand side expression, or write the update in full.
Contrary to Patrick's answer, C++ has no ^^ operator for performing a short-circuiting exclusive or. If you think about it for a second, having a ^^ operator wouldn't make sense anyway: with exclusive or, the result always depends on both operands. However, Patrick's warning about non-bool "Boolean" types holds equally well when comparing 1 & 2 to 1 && 2. One classic example of this is the Windows GetMessage() function, which returns a tri-state BOOL: nonzero, 0, or -1.
Using & instead of && and | instead of || is not an uncommon typo, so if you are deliberately doing it, it deserves a comment saying why.
Patrick made good points, and I'm not going to repeat them. However might I suggest reducing 'if' statements to readable english wherever possible by using well-named boolean vars.For example, and this is using boolean operators but you could equally use bitwise and name the bools appropriately:
bool onlyAIsTrue = (a && !b); // you could use bitwise XOR here
bool onlyBIsTrue = (b && !a); // and not need this second line
if (onlyAIsTrue || onlyBIsTrue)
{
.. stuff ..
}
You might think that using a boolean seems unnecessary, but it helps with two main things:
Your code is easier to understand because the intermediate boolean for the 'if' condition makes the intention of the condition more explicit.
If you are using non-standard or unexpected code, such as bitwise operators on boolean values, people can much more easily see why you've done this.
EDIT: You didnt explicitly say you wanted the conditionals for 'if' statements (although this seems most likely), that was my assumption. But my suggestion of an intermediate boolean value still stands.
Using bitwise operations for bool helps save unnecessary branch prediction logic by the processor, resulting from a 'cmp' instruction brought in by logical operations.
Replacing the logical with bitwise operations (where all operands are bool) generates more efficient code offering the same result. The efficiency ideally should outweigh all the short-circuit benefits that can be leveraged in the ordering using logical operations.
This can make code a bit un-readable albeit the programmer should comment it with reasons why it was done so.
IIRC, many C++ compilers will warn when attempting to cast the result of a bitwise operation as a bool. You would have to use a type cast to make the compiler happy.
Using a bitwise operation in an if expression would serve the same criticism, though perhaps not by the compiler. Any non-zero value is considered true, so something like "if (7 & 3)" will be true. This behavior may be acceptable in Perl, but C/C++ are very explicit languages. I think the Spock eyebrow is due diligence. :) I would append "== 0" or "!= 0" to make it perfectly clear what your objective was.
But anyway, it sounds like a personal preference. I would run the code through lint or similar tool and see if it also thinks it's an unwise strategy. Personally, it reads like a coding mistake.