Re: istream read failure: integral values as bool

.... including comp.lang.c++

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Consider the below code that I came across recently:

#include <iostream>
int main ()
{
bool a=false;
std::cout << "insert 0 or 1:";
std::cin >> a;
if (a==true)
{
std::cout << "a is true";
}
else
{
std::cout << "a is false";
}

}

If you run the above code and provide input as say, 8, the code
still returns back saying a is false. I get this behavior with
Visual Studio 2008. I would have thought that the integral value
should get implicitly converted to a boolean. In fact, when I
debugged the code in VC++, I do see that it is able to get the
value of the user input (i.e. 8) but then there is a certain check
which then fails and results in setting of the failbit of the
stream. If I check the status of the cin stream post that read, I
see the failbit set which means the read had failed.

relevant bit of VC++ code (file: xlocnum, function: do_get)
Code:
{ // get zero or nonzero integer
char _Ac[_MAX_INT_DIG], *_Ep;
int _Errno = 0;
const unsigned long _Ulo = ::_Stoulx(_Ac,
&_Ep,
_Getifld(_Ac, _First, _Last,
_Iosbase.flags(),
_Iosbase.getloc()), &_Errno);
if (_Ep != _Ac && _Errno == 0 && _Ulo <= 1)
_Ans = _Ulo;
}

The check _Ulo <= 1 is what rejects it. _Ulo is an unsigned long
which does get successfully evaluated to 8 (the input). So, it is
basically only allowing any other inputs than 0 and 1 via the
stream. Could this be a bug in VC++? I am not sure but I would have
thought that it would have considered any non-zero value as true.
Because, if I just simply set the value of boolean as 8 instead of
reading from the stream, the automatic conversion rules kick in and
the code works as expected.

Any views on this as to what the standard says because of which the
above is considered a failure? Thanks for your help.