trit

trit implements three-valued (ternary) logic in Go. A Trit is an int8 with three states — False (any negative number), Unknown (0) and True (any positive number) — and the full set of ternary logic operators (Not, And, Or, Xor, Nand, Nor, Nxor, implication, equivalence and more).

The key property is that the zero value is Unknown, so an uninitialized Trit is already meaningful. That is what makes it useful wherever a "maybe" or "not set" state matters — config merging, partial updates, nullable database columns, logic circuits — where a plain bool cannot tell "false" apart from "unset".

Features

• Three-valued logic operations (True, False, Unknown); zero value is Unknown.
• Safe bool conversions with explicit Unknown handling.
• Serialization: JSON (Unknown → null), text, and database/sql (Unknown → NULL).
• ParseTrit, Compare (ordering False < Unknown < True), and Default.
• Slice aggregates: All, Any, None, Known, Consensus, Majority (plus iter.Seq forms).
• Zero allocations for basic operations; property and fuzz tested.

Installation

go get github.com/goloop/trit/v2

import "github.com/goloop/trit/v2"

Requires Go 1.24 or newer.

Quick start

package main

import (
    "fmt"

    "github.com/goloop/trit/v2"
)

func main() {
    t1, t2 := trit.True, trit.False

    fmt.Println(t1.IsTrue())  // true
    fmt.Println(t1.And(t2))   // False
    fmt.Println(t1.Or(t2))    // True
    fmt.Println(t1.Xor(t2))   // True

    // Resolve the Unknown state.
    t3 := trit.Unknown
    t3.Default(trit.True)     // set only if currently Unknown
    fmt.Println(t3)           // True
}

Why three-valued logic? A bool config field cannot distinguish "explicitly false" from "not provided". A trit.Trit field can — an unset field stays Unknown, so you can apply a default without clobbering an explicit choice:

type Config struct {
    Enabled trit.Trit // Unknown until the caller sets it
}

func (s *Service) Configure(c Config) {
    if !c.Enabled.IsUnknown() {
        s.enabled = c.Enabled
    }
    trit.Default(&s.enabled, true) // default only if still unset
}

Documentation

• Full reference, truth tables and recipes: DOC.md · DOC.UK.md
• Package API: pkg.go.dev/github.com/goloop/trit/v2
• Changes between versions: CHANGELOG.md

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please run go test ./..., go vet ./... and gofmt -l . before submitting a pull request.

License

trit is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.