3 ms·
I would rather do away with signed vs unsigned integer types completely, and instead have sign-agnostic integers like down on the assembly level (the world has
by flohofwoe 3mo ago
I would rather do away with signed vs unsigned integer types completely, and instead have sign-agnostic integers like down on the assembly level (the world has settled on two's-complement anyway). Signed-vs-unsigned only matters in one situation: when extending a narrow integer type to a wider integer type (e.g. "sign-extension"), and this could be an explicit operation.
Beyond that, the decision whether a number is signed or unsigned is only needed for string formatting (e.g. it's like Schroedingers integers: whether a number is signed or unsigned only matters when you actually look at the number).
- empw 3mo agoWait till this guy learns about multiplication and division
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- flohofwoe 3mo agoYeah ok got me, but AFAIK at least multiplication is sign-agnostic when the result is clamped to the width of the inputs (e.g. the result of multiplying two 64-bit values being clamped to 64-bits). Not sure about division though. But in any case: with 'sign-agnostic' integer types high level languages would simply need separate signed vs unsigned mul/div operators. Not a big thing when modern languages already have different operators for wraparound vs overflow-checked arithmetic (for instance + vs +% in Zig).