CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++booleanincrement
Danny H
Danny H

Reputation: 41

Why is my boolean returning an integer?

I'm fairly new to the programming world and I had a school assignment to create a simple program containing an if loop. Basically, I want my code to return true if a is greater than 18, and false if a is less than 18. I also want a to increase by one each time canTakeRoadtest returns false. When I run my code all I get is

"I am 0 years old.

I can take my road test. 0"

I'm wondering why bool canTakeRoadtest is returning an integer, and why a isn't incrementing. Any help would be appreciated and I apologize for the simple question but we all start somewhere!

My coding environment is Eclipse Neon if it makes any difference.

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main() {
//Local Variables
    int a = 0;
    bool canTakeRoadtest = false;
//If Loop
    if (a >= 18) {
        canTakeRoadtest = true;
        cout << "I'm ready!\n";
    } else {
        canTakeRoadtest = false;
        cout << "I am " << a << " years old.\n";
        cout << "I can take my road test. " << canTakeRoadtest << endl;
        a++;

    }

    //return 0;

}

Upvotes: 4

Views: 3355

Answers (2)

user4981832
user4981832

Reputation:

Behind the scenes, every variable type in C++ has a number representation. This makes sense because at the base level of a computer, all there is is numbers. There are two main primitive data types that are (usually) represented as something other than a number, but are really just numbers. The first one is bool, and the second one is char.

For example, if you set

bool myBool = true;

behind the scenes, it is really setting your variable to 1. Similarly, if you set

myBool = false;

it will be 0 behind the scenes. The same rule applies for chars. If you set

char myChar = 'a';

it really is setting the char to 97. Every character has a number representation, and you can see these if you look at this table.

So, as to why cout is displaying the number representation of a bool rather than in "English", this is simply because whoever coded iostream decided that when you give it a bool it displays the number representation instead of the "English" representation. The same does not apply for chars, however. They will be represented as a character by iostream.

To fix iostream from printing out the incorrect representation, change your code from

cout << "I can take my road test. " << canTakeRoadtest << endl;

to

cout << "I can take my road test. false" << endl;

You could also use boolalpha, as Lovelace42 stated.

Upvotes: 4

Lovelace42
Lovelace42

Reputation: 64

Use boolalpha. By default bool values are integers, boolaplpha sets the bool flag to output its textual representation

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/ios/boolalpha/

Or you can just change your cout statement.

if (a >= 18) {
    canTakeRoadtest = true;
    cout << "I'm ready!\n";
} else {
    canTakeRoadtest = false;
    cout << "I am " << a << " years old.\n";
    cout << "I can take my road test. false" << endl;
    a++;
}

Upvotes: 2

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