On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 05:26:23PM +0100, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le decadi 10 frimaire, an CCXXIV, Hendrik Leppkes a écrit :
> > We generally just use ints for boolean properties, any particular
> > reason this uses unsigned instead?
>
> Just a matter of personal habit, justified below. But as I look at it, I see
> it is rather inconsistent with other fields in the struct that are int
> although they really would be better unsigned. Will change.
>
>
> When it does not matter, I usually use unsigned instead of signed because
> that often leaves the compiler more room for optimization. For example,
> "type half(type x) { return x / 2; }" compiles into this for unsigned:
>
> movl %edi, %eax
> shrl %eax
> ret
>
> And this for signed:
>
> movl %edi, %eax
> movl $2, %ecx
> cltd
> idivl %ecx
> ret
>
> In other words, "x / 2" can be optimized into "x >> 1" for unsigned, but not
> for signed because the rounding is not the same for negative.
>
> I suppose in fact you already knew that. Of course it does not make a
> difference here, but I prefer this habit instead of the other way around.
> For booleans, I feel that int gives the impression there is a third case,
> possibly error: think of ssize_t for the return value of syscalls. And if it
> becomes a counter, then it should naturally be unsigned.
> There is at least one case where you actually want it signed, which is when you loop over it. Typically, in the case of a width/height, you actually want it signed because it indicates the compiler that an overflow will not happen since a signed overflow is undefined. for (x = x_start; x < width; x++) Here, if we are dealing with signed, the compiler can simply assume that x will not overflow, go back to 0 and then reach width. See -Wstrict-overflow compiler option. Regards, -- Clément B.
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