> because it allows the difference of two pointers to be passed without a cast.
To be pedantic about it, differences in pointers are of type ptrdiff_t, not size_t, and I remember platforms where they weren't the same. It may be that these platforms are uninteresting from our perspectives. Steve -----Original Message----- From: Jim Starkey [mailto:j...@jimstarkey.net] Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2014 1:55 PM To: For discussion among Firebird Developers Subject: Re: [Firebird-devel] Firebird 3 build broken with gcc under Linux Having given this a little more thought, I'm going to reverse myself. Size_t is very convenient for passing lengths, not because it reflects the pointer size or that any rational structure is likely to be greater than 2GB, but because it allows the difference of two pointers to be passed without a cast. Size_t used to be a major pain in MSVS, but somewhere along the line MS decided to recognize it as an intrinsic. In a similar vein, including stdint.h used to bring in all sort of other random and various includes in MSVS, but no longer. It took a while for int64_t and int32_t to be anything but pug-ugly, but eventually I made an accomodation. It still use my own typedefs for major scalars like TransId, RecordId, AttributeId, etc. > On Jul 22, 2014, at 2:42 PM, Jim Starkey <j...@jimstarkey.net> wrote: > > I agree that size_t has no place in interfaces, ever. You should know what precision is required and use that. > > > > > > > > >> On Jul 22, 2014, at 1:41 PM, Nikolay Samofatov <nikolay.samofa...@red-soft.biz> wrote: >> >> Alex, >> >>>> On 07/22/2014 09:33 AM, Alex Peshkoff wrote: >>>>> On 07/22/14 17:23, Dimitry Sibiryakov wrote: >>>>> 22.07.2014 15:12, Alex Peshkoff wrote: >>>>> OK, but if we want to take into an account systems with 64-bit int >>>>> the only solution is artificial types? Like FB_SIZE_T? >>>> Yes, but definitely not "like FB_SIZE_T". >>>> I would say that if there is no standard type that describe the >>>> purpose of the type (like size_t for all size parameters), >>> It was said many times - size_t is very good thing, but we often do >>> not support such sizes internally. Please do not suggest to add such >>> support right now - or we will delay fb3 release more and more. >> >> I would say that adding such support properly is bordering to >> impossible, and is unreasonable for the time being. >> >> I can give you some examples where using size_t is not supported: >> - Win32 API (DWORD for sizes) >> - standard C library - e.g. "printf" - (int for sizes) >> - ICU library (int32_t type from C/C++ standard for sizes) >> - libtommath (int for sizes) >> - Firebird's own new API (unsigned int for sizes) :-) >> >> Shall I continue? >> >> In short, smart people who understand integers use signed 32-bit >> integer in their interfaces. Not so smart people use unsigned 32-bit integers. >> >> IMO, Size_t is evil data type for interfaces. Somebody, who tried to >> import such interface into platform neutral language will understand >> me. I don't know if any of you here have experience with JNA, but we have quite a bit of it. And this is just an example, there are languages besides Java. >> Non-pointer types that change size from one implementation to another are very difficult to work with. >> >> I think that we may disregard platforms where "int" is not 32-bit >> entity for now. Such platforms are uncommon and will likely fade away over time. >> >> And if facing need to port to such platform, change interfaces to use >> int32_t or uint32_t types from C/C++ standard. >> >> Re warnings: I absolutely cannot work with an unclean build. I am >> doing serious surgery on the Firebird code to implement "holy grail" >> of GC. :-) And I need every help from the compiler I can get, as warnings often point to real problems in the code. >> >> Thanks, >> Nikolay >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> --------- Want fast and easy access to all the code in your >> enterprise? Index and search up to 200,000 lines of code with a free >> copy of Black Duck Code Sight - the same software that powers the >> world's largest code search on Ohloh, the Black Duck Open Hub! Try it >> now. >> http://p.sf.net/sfu/bds >> Firebird-Devel mailing list, web interface at >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/firebird-devel ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Want fast and easy access to all the code in your enterprise? Index and search up to 200,000 lines of code with a free copy of Black Duck Code Sight - the same software that powers the world's largest code search on Ohloh, the Black Duck Open Hub! Try it now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bds Firebird-Devel mailing list, web interface at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/firebird-devel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Want fast and easy access to all the code in your enterprise? Index and search up to 200,000 lines of code with a free copy of Black Duck Code Sight - the same software that powers the world's largest code search on Ohloh, the Black Duck Open Hub! Try it now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bds Firebird-Devel mailing list, web interface at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/firebird-devel
