[CMake] too many kinds of FALSE

Brandon Van Every bvanevery at gmail.com
Sun Dec 16 13:58:38 EST 2007


On Dec 16, 2007 1:44 PM, Alexander Neundorf <a.neundorf-work at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Sunday 16 December 2007, Brandon Van Every wrote:
> > On Dec 16, 2007 11:57 AM, David Cole <david.cole at kitware.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/16/07, Brandon Van Every <bvanevery at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > What's so great about "n" and "no" ?
> > >
> > > Nobody has claimed that they are great...
> > >
> > > > I've never used them.  Do we
> > > > really need to be polluting the interpretation of strings with these
> > > > values?  What current or legacy code is using them heavily?
> > >
> > > We cannot know. We can only assume that somebody somewhere is probably
> > > using them since they are part of how CMake currently works.
> >
> > What's an example in the CMake source pool where they're actually used
> > for something?  Or VTK or ITK?  I've never had a reason to use "n" or
> > "N".
>
> "n" alone indeed also evaluates to false. Hmm, this really seems like a not so
> good idea.

I think it sucks.  -1

> Try the following, this will make it always two strings:
> if("${myvar}" STREQUAL "")

Of course now we gotta rewrite the docs to tell everyone they're not
really supposed to use the documented if(myvar STREQUAL "") because
they'll cut their fingers off.  And I have to type it; you know, I
*like* not having to type extra stuff.  I like if(myvar) better than
if(myvar STREQUAL "") better than if("${myvar}" STREQUAL "").  There's
a reason that non-CMake programmers object to jumping through these
hoops.

I'm adding the following to the list of Lua motives:
- mature corner cases

I'm willing to push CMake script towards maturity.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every


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