CWG Issue 661 (original) (raw)

This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21 Core Issues List revision 117a. See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official list.

2025-04-13

661. Semantics of arithmetic comparisons

Section: 7.6.9 [expr.rel]Status: CD1Submitter: Daveed VandevoordeDate: 27 November 2007

[Voted into the WP at the June, 2008 meeting.]

The actual semantics of arithmetic comparison — e.g., whether 1 < 2 yields true or false— appear not to be specified anywhere in the Standard. The C Standard has a general statement that

Each of the operators < (less than), >(greater than), <= (less than or equal to), and >= (greater than or equal to) shall yield 1 if the specified relation is true and 0 if it is false.

There is no corresponding statement in the C++ Standard.

Proposed resolution (February, 2008):

  1. Append the following paragraph to the end of 7.6.9 [expr.rel]:

If both operands (after conversions) are of arithmetic type, each of the operators shall yield true if the specified relation is true and false if it is false.

  1. Append the following paragraph to the end of 7.6.10 [expr.eq]:

Each of the operators shall yield true if the specified relation is true and false if it is false.