Messages in this thread |  | | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: Advice on Unsigned Types | Date | 4 Sep 2001 18:00:19 -0700 |
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Followup to: <3B8EF269.BF457C7F@home.com> By author: John Kacur <jkacur@home.com> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel > > The advice the author give on Unsigned Types is: > "Avoid unnecessary complexity by minimizing your use of unsigned types. > Specifically, don't use an unsigned type to represent a quantity just > because it will never be negative (e.g."age" or "national debt"). > Use a signed type like int and you won't have to worry about boundary > cases in the detailed rules for promoting mixed types. > Only use unsigned types for bitfields or binary masks. Use casts in > expressions, to make all the operands signed or unsigned, so the > compiler does not have to choose the result type." >
So the author isn't talking about developing operating systems. In operating systems it's almost the other way around -- signed is really the exception.
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