From: NeedNotReplyHere@nospicedham.xrsevnneqk.cem   
      
   On Sat, 1 Jul 2017 07:56:50 +0100   
   James Harris  wrote:   
      
   > On 01/07/2017 03:18, Rod Pemberton wrote:   
      
   > > [...]   
   > As I've said before, I dislike casts for the very reason that they   
   > disable useful warnings.   
      
   They also allow valid conversions which the type system may prevent.   
      
   E.g., in certain situations, you need the dereferenced pointer type to   
   be the same type as the original, i.e., address interpreter.   
      
   E.g., the %p pointer format for printf() is implementation defined,   
   i.e., not available, faulty, weird format, etc.  So, I prefer to cast   
   to unsigned long so that I can emit the address as formatted hex.   
      
   E.g., you have a pointer to some type, such as a struct, which you   
   need to treat as an array of chars, e.g., copy, fix endianness,   
   scramble/encode, translate, zero-fill, etc.   
      
   > > If I was designing a language like C today, signed integers would   
   > > not be present.   
   >   
   > By that, aren't you undermining the premise of the very algorithm we   
   > are discussing? It returns the difference between two byte values as   
   > in   
   >   
   >    return s1[i] - s2[i];   
   >   
   > Surely the fact that that could be -ve, zero, or +ve is intended to   
   > be useful. If you ruled out signed numbers then the function could   
   > not work in the same way.   
   >   
      
   True.  Maybe, I should allow int to be signed, but then again.   
      
   How many C functions return three conditions?  Is there any use for two   
   true (non-zero) states?  Won't true and false generally suffice?  The   
   OP was using qsort(), IIRC.  So, he may have needed 3 values, but   
   normally, I only need to know if a string compare was a match or not.   
   ATM, I can't think of any functions with 3 return states where I need   
   3-states.   
      
   Isn't the fact that a function uses subtraction to compute a return   
   value more likely to be the reason for 3-states "-ve, zero, or +ve"   
   than the fact that 3-states are somehow useful?   
      
      
   Rod Pemberton   
   --   
   You've got to love liberals.  They're too stupid to understand that   
   government run healthcare (single-payer) is a huge cost break for the   
   rich.  The burden of expensive healthcare is shifted onto all taxpayers.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)