Re: [Bug-apl] Miscellaneous minor fixes

[Alexey Dokuchaev]

On 7/4/19, Dr. Jürgen Sauermann <mail@jürgen-sauermann.de> wrote:
> Regarding signed vs. unsigned, the question is not so much if the chosen
> type can hold the value but the number of comparisons needed to compute
> if a value fits into a range (where the vast majority of cases the range
> starts at 0).
>
> A signed X falls into range [0, N] iff:   X ≥ 0 and X < N
> An unsigned X falls into range [0, N] iff:   X < N

Understood.  It should not be too hard to fix, just make sure that
your desired types do not conflict with system types like rlim_t, then
either use a compatible type or employ a typecast as a last resort
(typecasts are evil and should be avoided).

> This fired back badly (with milllions of warnings) when I replaced
> Simple_string<X> with std::string<X> which uses unsigned for the length.

Been these, done that. :-)  Usually, the safest approach when handling
sizes is to use size_t type (which is unsigned, just as you prefer)
and only reluctantly fallback to ssize_t if you need/must to handle
negative sizes for some reason in the same variable (e.g. for error
handling).  Reluctantly because it is generally a bad idea to convey
errors by abusing the data type itself.  Unfortunately, in many
traditional languages there is no support for algebraic data types to
handle these situations in a correct, type-safe way.

./danfe