That will only set as many bits as are in an int, which is wrong if the type of the variable you are setting is wider than int. For a long, you could of course

That will only set as many bits as are in an int, which is wrong if the type of the variable you are setting is wider than int. For a long, you could of course use ~0ul, and so on for other types, but then you'd have to find and update every such assignment if the variable were ever changed to a wider type.