4 ms·
The only type worse than 'int' is 'long'.
by TwoBit 6y ago
The only type worse than 'int' is 'long'.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoit's really a tie between "int", "long" and DWORD (though thankfully DWORD never made it into a language standard). I would put "char" in the running now that we (thankfully) live in an increasingly UTF-8 world, but at least it's more or less universally understood to mean an 8 bit entity (even though this is not strictly true). It certainly isn't "a character".
- mehrdadn 6y agolong is definitely worse than int. At least you know int is never 64-bit on desktops, and it comes in handy enough for things like logarithms. long being either 32-bit or 64-bit on the same platform depending on the compiler just feels like insanity.
- MaulingMonkey 6y agoIt's absolutely insanity. A cruel question I came up with the other day, based on it - What is the result of: std::is_signed<decltype(1L * 2U)>() ?
- folmar 6y agoWhy should it be cruel? Promotions are a part of life of an integer in C.
- MaulingMonkey 6y agoEven programmers who are roughly aware of integral promotion rules may not have connected all the dots to realize the answer is implementation dependent. If sizeof(long) == sizeof(unsigned int), 1L * 2U results in an unsigned int, meaning the result is "false". If sizeof(long) > sizeof(unsigned int), 1L * 2U result in a signed long, meaning the result is "true".
- mehrdadn 6y agoWow that is cruel! Somehow I just assumed int would get promoted to long regardless of their size difference. That this isn't the case almost seems like a language defect!