Flags - The complicated version

It is nice to see different point of views on things which reminds me of the story of the 5 Blind Men and the Elephant. As it goes, it suggests that the 5 Blind men touched the elephant and described it as what they felt. The one that touched the ears said the Elephant is more like a Fan, the one that touched the Trunk, said it is like a snake, the one that touched the leg said it is like a tree the one that touched the Side said it is like a wall and the one that touched the tail said it is like a rope.

So, Here's what the Elephant looks like in it's entirety.
Flags are another word used in the computing terminology for Booleans. It probably stems from the early days of computing where developers would set bits on the register to *flag* the presence or absence of something. It was a Binary switch, that could be turned On or Off. Later when programming moved on from Machine Code to high level languages, and variables had the option to be of a particular type, the most logical type for *flags* variables that held either an On state or an Off state were Booleans. Which were able to hold, a True/False, Yes/No, On/Off and in some languages they were even defined as 0/1

So for those that had blank stares when they came across the word *Flag*, the complicated expanded version suggests that it is
1. A True/False type of value
2. It cannot have any other state, other than On/Off
3. You can have as many of these as you want

For those that fear the *technical* word Boolean, well that's what it is called. And what a better time to read up on BOO-leans than with Halloween approaching.

So, for those that are after knowing what the full elephant looks like than just a part, go ahead, read on...

You can read in detail about the same on http://howto.oz-apps.com/2011/09/boo-lean.html

cheers,

?:)

views:1277 update:2011/11/2 21:34:51
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