Andrei's std.path review

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 8/13/11 7:20 AM, Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:27:54 -0700, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> On Thursday, August 11, 2011 07:10:08 Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
>>> On Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:37:01 -0600, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> * filenameCharCmp and filenameCmp ->  why long and not int?
>>>
>>> filenameCharCmp() returns a-b, and since a and b are dchars, the
>>> corresponding signed type is long.  filenameCmp() returns long because
>>> filenameCharCmp() does.
>>
>> I'd argue that you should just cast it to int and return int. All the
>> various compare functions promise is whether the return value is less
>> than, equal to, or greater than 0. Relying on the exact value is wrong.
>> And normally such functions return int. So, I don't see any reason why
>> these shouldn't be change to return int.
>
> But what do we gain by making it an int?  long just seems more natural in
> this case, IMO.

Unicode characters range in between 0 through 1,114,111. So the most 
natural type of the difference is int.

This would be the first time I'm seeing an API returning a ternary value 
as a long.

(Also, 64-bit machines can operate on two 32-bit integrals 
simultaneously (literally) so 32-bit integrals may be faster. Probably 
not a material advantage.)


Andrei