Do negative numbers return false in C/C++?

Question

When evaluating integers as booleans in C/C++, are negative numbers true or false? Are they always true/false regardless of compilers?

Answer 1

You can test it yourself by compiling this:

#include 

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    if (-1) {
        printf("-1 is true\n");
    } else {
        printf("-1 is false\n");
    }
    return 0;
}

Results:

$ gcc -Wall -pedantic test.c -o test-c
$ g++ -Wall -pedantic test.c -o test-cpp
$ ./test-c
-1 is true
$ ./test-cpp
-1 is true

Of course, to answer the second part of your question, "Are they always true/false regardless of compilers?", the only way to be completely sure is to look at the spec. In general though, compilers will warn you if you do something dangerous, and you can see from the output above, that even with "pedantic" warnings, gcc considers this code to be perfectly fine.