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C programming language (from C99) supports Boolean data type (bool) and internally, it was referred as _Bool as boolean was not a datatype in early versions of C. In C, boolean is known as bool data type. To use boolean, a header file stdbool.h must be included to use bool in C.

bool is an alias to _Bool to avoid breaking existing C code which might be using bool as an identifier. You can learn about _Bool here in detail.

#include <stdbool.h> 

Note if we do not include the above header file, then we need to replace bool with _Bool and the code will work as usually.

Standard logical operators AND (&&), OR(||) and NOT(!) can be used with the Boolean type in any combination.

In computer science, the Boolean data type is a data type that has one of two possible values, either TRUE or FALSE. Due to two possible values, it needs only 1 bit. In actual computing systems, the minimum amount of memory is set to a particular value (usually 8 bits) which is used (all bits as 0 or 1).

Memory

An object declared as type Bool is large enough to store the values 0 and 1.

printf("%zu", sizeof(bool));

The above code will give size 1 for bool, so generally bool store a 1 byte of memory. Note: it needs only 1 bit but takes 8 bits due to the structure of the computing system.

For example:

• true is denoted as 00000001
• false is denoted as 00000000

Declaration

To declare a variable as a boolean use:

bool variable_name = true;

Example:

#include <stdbool.h> 
#include <stdio.h>
int main() 
{ 
bool a = true;
  if(a)
    printf("Its ture");
return 0; 
} 

Output:

Its true

Bool with Logical Operators

We can use logical operators with boolean.

Types of logical operators:

• && (AND): takes 2 booleans; returns true only if both operands are true else false
• || (OR): returns true if either or both of the operands are true else false
• ! (NOT): takes 1 operand; return true if operand is false and false if operand is true

Example:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    bool a=true, b=false;
    printf("%d\n", a&&b);
    printf("%d\n", a||b);
    printf("%d\n", !b);
}

Output:

0
1
1

Bool Array

#include <stdbool.h> 
int main() 
{ 
  bool arr[2] = {true, false}; 
  printf("Value at index 1 of array is %d",arr[1]);
  return 0; 
} 

Output:

Value at index 1 of array is 0

How to convert a boolean to integer? (type casting)

A type cast is basically a conversion from one type to another.
An object declared as type Bool is large enough to store the values 0 and 1.

Example:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdbool.h>

int main() {
	int n = 1;
	bool x = true;
	n = (bool)true;;
	printf("%d",n);        //Output: 1
	return 0;
}

There's no need to cast to bool for built-in types because that conversion is implicit. On converting to other integral types, a true bool will become 1 and a false bool will become 0.

Question

Consider the following C code:

#include <stdbool.h> 
#include <stdio.h>
int main() 
{ 
bool a = true;
 bool b = false;
  if(a == 1)
    printf("Its ture");
  else if(b == 0)
    printf("B is fasle");
  else
    printf("Did not work!");
return 0; 
}