On Saturday, January 21, 2012 07:53:51 Nick Sabalausky wrote: > "Trass3r" <u...@known.com> wrote in message news:op.v8flqsr63ncmek@enigma... > > >> Couldn't it be handled by a special switch on 64 bit compilers, and > >> disabled normally? > > > > Theoretically yes, but it would destroy the original intention. > > Ensuring 64 bit compatibility is as easy as compiling with -m64 from > > time > > to time, but some people can't be bothered. > > Or they're on windows.
Then you've got the added fun of whether it builds on Linux or any other Posix system _anyway_. To really know whether something is going to work on a system other than the one you're developing on, you need to buid it and run into on other systems (or built it _for_ other systems and then run it there in the case of cross-compiling). It would be nice if size_t were handled better, but a flag for 64-bit would only solve _one_ of the problems related to writing code on one system and trying to run it on another, and that's assuming that it actually solved the problem for 64-bit, which it wouldn't, since you could still have version differences beyond size_t. It would just help with the very common (and understandably annoying) issue of using size_t correctly on 32-bit box such that it would work on a 64-bit box. So, it may very well be worth having something in the compiler flag obvious mis-use of size_t, but it doesn't really solve the problem, just mitigate it. - Jonathan M Davis