--- Types-Serialiser/Serialiser.pm	2013/11/30 18:33:51	1.9
+++ Types-Serialiser/Serialiser.pm	2020/12/01 01:47:20	1.10
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
 
 use common::sense; # required to suppress annoying warnings
 
-our $VERSION = '1.0';
+our $VERSION = '1.01';
 
 =head1 SIMPLE SCALAR CONSTANTS
 
@@ -28,6 +28,9 @@
 scalars. This is necessary because these have different representations in
 the serialisation formats.
 
+In the following, functions with zero or one arguments have a prototype of
+C<()> and C<($)>, respectively, so act as constants and unary operators.
+
 =head2 BOOLEANS (Types::Serialiser::Boolean class)
 
 This type has only two instances, true and false. A natural representation
@@ -54,6 +57,13 @@
 The constant is represented as a reference to a scalar containing C<0> -
 implementations are allowed to directly test for this.
 
+=item Types::Serialiser::as_bool $value
+
+Converts a Perl scalar into a boolean, which is useful syntactic
+sugar. Strictly equivalent to:
+
+   $value ? $Types::Serialiser::true : $Types::Serialiser::false
+
 =item $is_bool = Types::Serialiser::is_bool $value
 
 Returns true iff the C<$value> is either C<$Types::Serialiser::true> or
@@ -129,6 +139,8 @@
 sub false () { $false }
 sub error () { $error }
 
+sub as_bool($) { $_[0] ? $true : $false }
+
 sub is_bool  ($) {           UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], Types::Serialiser::Boolean:: }
 sub is_true  ($) {  $_[0] && UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], Types::Serialiser::Boolean:: }
 sub is_false ($) { !$_[0] && UNIVERSAL::isa $_[0], Types::Serialiser::Boolean:: }