Hi Charlie,
Here's what the JVM says about <code>boolean</code> types:
3.3.4 The boolean Type
Although the Java virtual machine defines a boolean type, it only provides very limited
support for it. There are no Java virtual machine instructions solely dedicated to operations on boolean values. Instead, expressions in the Java programming language that operate on boolean values are compiled to use values of the Java virtual machine int data type.
The Java virtual machine does directly support boolean arrays. Its newarray instruction enables creation of boolean arrays. Arrays of type boolean are accessed and modified using the byte array instructions baload and bastore.2
The Java virtual machine encodes boolean array components using 1 to represent true and 0 to represent false. Where Java programming language boolean values are mapped by compilers to values of Java virtual machine type int, the compilers must use the same encoding.
From the above, looks as if it is handled as an <code>int</code> in most cases; a <code>byte</code> for arrays.
I don't think it would be practical to handle it as a <code>bit</code> because of memory addressing; which is usually 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit or 64-bit.
Hope that helps.
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Jane Griscti
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java� 2 Platform
[This message has been edited by Jane Griscti (edited May 21, 2001).]