4 ms·

Integer promotion seems to be the source of many signed integer overflow UB. Why does C have it? Does integer promotion ever have a good part?

• saagarjha 5mo ago
  Yes, it simplifies a lot of code that would otherwise be littered with casts.
  • peterfirefly 5mo ago
    Could be fixed by having a nicer casting syntax (like Rust) or by not having so damn many scalar types that are used in practice. "Explicit casts only" worked fine in Modula-2, which doesn't have as many scalar types.
    • saagarjha 5mo ago
      Yeah most modern languages settle on having fewer types that are used most of the time and don't require as many casts.