ow Integers Should Work

[Manu]

I can agree that in some circumstances, a ranged and saturated integer mode
would be REALLY handy (colours, sound samples), but I can't buy in with the
whole trapping overflows and stuff... most architectures will require
explicit checking of the overflow bit after every operation to support
this. Also, contrary to his claim, I find that wrapping is usually what I
DO want in this case..
It's super rare that I write any code that pushes the limits of an int
(unless we're talking 8-16 bit, see my range+saturation comment before),
and when I do write code that pushes the range of an int, I can't think of
a time when I've not wanted to wrap as expected. If I'm dealing with
integers that big, chances are I'm dealing with memory ranges, bit masks,
or some compression/crypto type thing where the algorithms depend on it.
Not only am I aware of the wrapping behaviour, it's usually the intent...

On 5 December 2011 18:37, Don <nospam at nospam.com> wrote:

> On 05.12.2011 14:31, bearophile wrote:
>
>> Found through Reddit, two blog posts about how integers should behave in
>> system languages (with hardware support):
>>
>> http://blog.regehr.org/**archives/641<http://blog.regehr.org/archives/641>
>> http://blog.regehr.org/**archives/642<http://blog.regehr.org/archives/642>
>>
>> Bye,
>> bearophile
>>
>
> Not very convincing, since he proposes a change to existing architectures,
> and seems completely unaware of the overflow flag.
> If you can change existing architectures, why not simply allow an
> exception to be generated if an overflow occurs?
>
> Doesn't seem at all helpful to D.
>
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