tracker issue : CF-3616205

Ref: http://cfmlblog.adamcameron.me/2013/08/brad-wood-makes-interesting-feature.html

Consider adopting some behaviors from languages such as JavaScript or Groovy which allow for more clever conditional statements to be constructed. Consider this ticket a discussion on whether this is even possible and what implications it would have. I assume this might also require an on/off flag such as the null support feature.
This table outlines a suggestion of how the following values would behave when cast to booleans:
Value	 Truthiness
null	 false
Number	 false if 0, otherwise true
String	 false if "", "false", or "no"; otherwise true.
Array	 false if empty, otherwise true
Struct	 false if empty, otherwise true
Object	 true
This would allow for the full ternary version of the Elvis operator (Assuming full null support):
foo = null;
bar = foo ? foo : "default";
It would also simplify checking for the contents of structs and arrays:
myArray = [1,2.3];
if( myArray ) writeOut("Array has stuff");

myStruct = [];
if( !myStruct ) writeOut("Struct is empty");
I think these changes might be somewhat straightforward and mostly affect the Caster class, but most importantly:
Do we want this in CFML?
Would this have serious implications in backwards compatibility?
Other things to consider that are similar to Groovy would be Java Map, List and Iterator classes. True if not empty, or hasNext() is true.
References:
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GROOVY/Groovy+Truth
http://javascriptweblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/truth-equality-and-javascript/

----------------------------- Additional Watson Details -----------------------------

Watson Bug ID:	3616205

External Customer Info:
External Company:  
External Customer Name: Adam Cameron.
External Customer Email:  
External Test Config: My Hardware and Environment details:

Attachments:

Comments: