On 19 February 2012 17:09, Stewart Gordon <smjg_1998@yahoo.com> wrote:

On 19/02/2012 14:59, Manu wrote:

Okay, so it came up a couple of times, but the questions is, what are we going to do about it?

size_t and ptrdiff_t are incomplete, and represent non-complimentary signed/unsigned
halves of the requirement.
There are TWO types needed, register size, and pointer size. Currently, these are assumed
to be the same, which is a false assumption.

The whole point of size_t and ptrdiff_t is that they are integer types that span the address space. So that the size of an allocated block of memory (and consequently, the number of elements in an array) is bound to fit in a size_t, and the displacement between two memory locations is bound to fit in a ptrdiff_t.

What would this "register size" type you are proposing be for, exactly?

You also need a type that knows the native word size of the machine, not just a pointer width. If size_t should be the pointer size, then there needs to be some other type that specifies the register width of the architecture.

<snip>

There is also the problem that there is lots of code written using the incorrect types.

<snip>

Like what?

There is code that assumes size_t is the width of the pointer, and other code that assumes size_t is the width of the native int. Only one of those is correct, whichever you declare it to be, and another type needs to be invented to define the other.