On Sat, Aug 2, 2025 at 11:02 AM Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 02, 2025 at 10:45:49AM +0200, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 2, 2025 at 9:32 AM Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > On Fri, Aug 01, 2025 at 11:57:43PM +0200, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Aug 1, 2025 at 6:01 PM Colin Ian King <colin.i.king@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > There are incorrect %u format specifiers being used to for signed integers,
> > > > > fix this by using %d instead.
> > > >
> > > > Both of them sound to me like the fix of the symptom and not the
> > > > cause. Can we simply make types of the iterators to be unsigned
> > > > instead?
> > >
> > > Making iterator unsigned by default only increases the rate of bugs.
> >
> > How? Please, make sure this is relevant to this case.
>
> You're suggesting that he should change:
>
> - int i, j;
> + unsigned int i, j;
>
> It's just bad advice.
I disagree with this statement. The code varies and in some cases it
should be negative, but those cases are not these one, or you are
talking about _this_ case? If you are talking in general, again I
fully disagree with your statement. One needs to use a common sense.
> Making iterators unsigned makes the code less
> safe. It leads underflow bugs when we do subtraction:
>
> for (i = num - 1; i < limit; i++) {
>
> Now i starts at UINT_MAX. Which I guess is fine in this example...
Depends on the num semantics. The main what one needs is a common sense.
> But it also leads to endless loops in the error handling:
>
> while (i-- >= 0) {
How? Error handling usually takes i > 0. Bad example, try harder.
>
> Making iterators unsigned is a bad habbit
True when use in conjunction with the same statement for signed cases:
"Making iterators signed is a bad habit"
> and it's bad advice in terms
> of the data that we have with regards to bugs.
Disagree. Bugs are common because people do not understand the C
language and its integer rules, wrap-arounds, etc. I believe in many
cases using signed iterators "fix" the bugs due to other variables
also being signed instead of both being unsigned.
--
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko
