newbie C99 question

[Mark Bruno]

Why is the keyword for the new built in boolean type _Bool and not bool?
Why should I have to include stdbool.h everytime i want to use bool instead
of _Bool? (I guess i have the same question for _Complex and _Imaginary).

 

[Arthur J. O'Dwyer]

Why is the keyword for the new built in boolean type _Bool and not bool?
Why should I have to include stdbool.h everytime i want to use bool instead
of _Bool? (I guess i have the same question for _Complex and _Imaginary).

Because many C90 programmers and implementations have already done
this:

typedef int bool;

or this:

#define bool unsigned char

somewhere buried inside their projects, and the C99 people rightly
decided to make life easier for them.
No C90 programmer should have been writing

typedef int _Bool;

because the identifier '_Bool' was (and still is) reserved for
the implementation's use only. Ditto with _Complex et alia.
It's a backwards-compatibility feature.

HTH,
-Arthur