Objective-C : BOOL vs bool

I saw the "new type" BOOL (YES, NO).

I read that this type is almost like a char.

For testing I did :

NSLog(@"Size of BOOL %d", sizeof(BOOL));
NSLog(@"Size of bool %d", sizeof(bool));

Good to see that both logs display "1" (sometimes in C++ bool is an int and its sizeof is 4)

So I was just wondering if there were some issues with the bool type or something ?

Can I just use bool (that seems to work) without losing speed?

Solution 1:

From the definition in objc.h:

#if (TARGET_OS_IPHONE && __LP64__)  ||  TARGET_OS_WATCH
typedef bool BOOL;
#else
typedef signed char BOOL; 
// BOOL is explicitly signed so @encode(BOOL) == "c" rather than "C" 
// even if -funsigned-char is used.
#endif

#define YES ((BOOL)1)
#define NO  ((BOOL)0)

So, yes, you can assume that BOOL is a char. You can use the (C99) bool type, but all of Apple's Objective-C frameworks and most Objective-C/Cocoa code uses BOOL, so you'll save yourself headache if the typedef ever changes by just using BOOL.

Solution 2:

As mentioned above, BOOL is a signed char. bool - type from C99 standard (int).

BOOL - YES/NO. bool - true/false.

See examples:

bool b1 = 2;
if (b1) printf("REAL b1 \n");
if (b1 != true) printf("NOT REAL b1 \n");

BOOL b2 = 2;
if (b2) printf("REAL b2 \n");
if (b2 != YES) printf("NOT REAL b2 \n");

And result is

REAL b1
REAL b2
NOT REAL b2

Note that bool != BOOL. Result below is only ONCE AGAIN - REAL b2

b2 = b1;
if (b2) printf("ONCE AGAIN - REAL b2 \n");
if (b2 != true) printf("ONCE AGAIN - NOT REAL b2 \n");

If you want to convert bool to BOOL you should use next code

BOOL b22 = b1 ? YES : NO; //and back - bool b11 = b2 ? true : false;

So, in our case:

BOOL b22 = b1 ? 2 : NO;
if (b22)    printf("ONCE AGAIN MORE - REAL b22 \n");
if (b22 != YES) printf("ONCE AGAIN MORE- NOT REAL b22 \n");

And so.. what we get now? :-)