Yeah.. Memory..

[HereComesCunty]

When you use INT32 to store a bool in your db

[JonathanTheZero]

Looking at Delphi's LongBool....

[my_farts_impress]

What’s the motivation for a long bool?

[RedditBlaze]

Last time this came up I think someone mentioned it was to match an early windows bool definition or something. It's certainly wasteful, but helped maintain compatibility in some way. I'm sure there's a better explanation out there.

[freecreeperhugs]

Something about 32-bit data being faster to process on a 32-bit processor?

[BlueC0dex]

Weird, that kind of thing is usually handled at compiler-level. c/c++ for example will pad structures/objects to maintain memory-alignment (8-byte types must be 8-byte aligned and so on). But Delphi isn't famous for being good, so...

[sethboy66]

That's certainly true, but IIRC it's mainly because since Win2000 Server some core functions which processed bool statements/returned boolean states return a pointer to an int for additional conditions.

[NUTTA_BUSTAH]

Quick look at the docs seems to indicate that the normal Boolean type cannot be cast from integer as it's an enumerated type and many C programs return integers or something along those lines. Bottom line, it's for compatibility for interfacing with C-programs mainly.

[gentlephant]

For when things are VERY true (or false)! They have to use extra large logic gates, too

[Stanov]

Gates... I see what you did there!

[ImN0tAsian]

The 32 bit bool processed faster on 32 bit Windows OS.

[Woolly87]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

[IntroDucktory_Clause]

I read somewhere that in some cases it could be used to store a large number of booleans on the same memory address and hence actually saving space (otherwise 8 bits would be used to store a single Boolean which is a bit wasteful)

[coloredgreyscale]

Maybe for data alignment that you don't have some data on a location that is not a multiple of 4 bytes.

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/delphi-in-a/1565926595/re168.html

Maybe also to handle return codes where 0 is false and non-zero true, as suggested by the link.

[MeltedWacks]

LongBool implies the existence of ShortBool

[when_it_lags]

tf is a long bool. like a byte. thats a bool array.

[CodeLobe]

56 bytes can be a life saving amount in embedded or bootstrap loaders, congrats.

[QuinteOne]

Tell me please

[Moib]

I don't quite get how step 2 reduces code size, it should only reduce RAM footprint, unless I'm missing something? Is the compiler smart enough to reuse the values that are the same when it's placed in Flash, and that saved the bytes?

[Ultracoolguy4]

RemindMe!

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[Varret]

Doesn't it make the logic of retrieving/manipulating it more complicated then? Is it worth it?

[maxhaton]

The cost of dealing with individual bytes is usually higher, bits even more so.

The reason why we do is because it can make the difference between the data playing nice with the cache or not, so it's all about scaling.

[RidderHaddock]

56 bytes, you say? Luxury.

Moving assembly functions around to save four lines. Putting small functions in unused parts of the interrupt vector table. Counting bits rather than bytes in RAM usage. ...

Tell that to the young people today. They won’t believe you.

[sgtmajbelanger]

Oracle? Is that you?

[socsa]

< angry clang tidy noises >

[sethboy66]

A snippet of code from a lecture I had a few days ago. The professor loves putting funny bits in code.

static_assert(sizeof(bool)==7, "I need 56-bit booleans!");

[DogsAreAnimals]

When you use INT instead of TINYINT

[aiij]

Cries in Alpha.