Yo Eric! On Thu, 9 Mar 2017 15:42:20 -0500 "Eric S. Raymond" <e...@thyrsus.com> wrote:
> Hal Murray <hmur...@megapathdsl.net>:
> >
> > e...@thyrsus.com said:
> > > It doesn't matter. All those calculations are casted to within
> > > an inch of their lives. :-)
> >
> > Would it help to have another signed type?
>
> The short answer is "no". The longer answer:
I'm starting to disagree, I see a need for only a signed type.
Too often the unsigned type is then used to compute offsets and the
casts get ugly.
> If I were willing to commit either way I could
> throw away several of them in favor of bare arithmetic operations.
Which I find another good reason to do this. The wrong macros are used
a lot of the time. Simplification will make it harder to repeat the
mistakes of the past.
> I've chosen not to do that because the reality is that the code
> sometimes wants to treat the abstract type as signed and sometimes as
> unsigned.
I see no case, yet, where the unsigned does not fit in a signed. And
since we are throwing casts on casts on casts in macros if there was
a problem it would be batich to see.
As I am untgling I only see things looking better.
> That is a prospect that makes me even more nervous than the dodgy
> casts and type punning we're using now.
I see it the reverse, get rid of all the casting about, and make things
more explicit.
> If we changed all those usage sites I think the proof problem would
> become a lot more difficult. That's why, as nervous as the present
> code makes me, I haven't tried to abolish the abstract data type it
> implements.
All of this will have to be one big patch, as things have to
change atomically. I'll not make it a merge request as this is
something that buildbot will be essential for.
And since it is one patch, you can revert it if need be.
If you want, I can post a git diff for review first.
RGDS
GARY
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