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In computer science, the Boolean (sometimes shortened to Bool) is a data type that has one of two possible values (usually denoted true and false) which is intended to represent the two truth values of logic and Boolean algebra. It is named after George Boole, who first defined an algebraic system of logic in the mid 19th century.
A Boolean value is either true or false. A Boolean expression may be composed of a combination of the Boolean constants True/False or Yes/No, Boolean-typed variables, Boolean-valued operators, and Boolean-valued functions. [1] Boolean expressions correspond to propositional formulas in logic and are a special case of Boolean circuits. [2]
Many programming languages do not have an explicit Boolean type, instead using an integer type and interpreting (for instance) 0 as false and other values as true. Boolean data refers to the logical structure of how the language is interpreted to the machine language. In this case a Boolean 0 refers to the logic False.
Instead, numeric values of zero are interpreted as false, and any other value is interpreted as true. [9] The newer C99 added a distinct Boolean type _Bool (the more intuitive name bool as well as the macros true and false can be included with stdbool.h), [10] and C++ supports bool as a built-in type and true and false as reserved words. [11]
Short-circuit evaluation, minimal evaluation, or McCarthy evaluation (after John McCarthy) is the semantics of some Boolean operators in some programming languages in which the second argument is executed or evaluated only if the first argument does not suffice to determine the value of the expression: when the first argument of the AND function evaluates to false, the overall value must be ...
The boolean expression is then evaluated again; this continues until the expression evaluates to false. [15] As of J2SE 5.0, the for keyword can also be used to create a so-called "enhanced for loop", [16] which specifies an array or Iterable object; each iteration of the loop executes the associated block of statements using a different ...
In mathematics, a Boolean function is a function whose arguments and result assume values from a two-element set (usually {true, false}, {0,1} or {-1,1}). [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Alternative names are switching function , used especially in older computer science literature, [ 3 ] [ 4 ] and truth function (or logical function) , used in logic .
The few systems that calculate the majority function on an even number of inputs are often biased towards "0" – they produce "0" when exactly half the inputs are 0 – for example, a 4-input majority gate has a 0 output only when two or more 0's appear at its inputs. [1] In a few systems, the tie can be broken randomly. [2]