Signed word lengths and indexes

[Pelle]

On 06/15/2010 02:10 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 07:30:52 -0400, bearophile
> <bearophileHUGS at lycos.com> wrote:
>
>> Steven Schveighoffer:
>>> i is unsigned, and therefore can never be less than 0. It's actually a
>>> clever way to do it that I've never thought of.
>>
>> Clever code is bad. It must be minimized. In some rare situations it
>> becomes useful, but its usage must be seen as a failure of the
>> programmer, that was unable to write not-clever code that does the
>> same things.
>
> Clever code is bad? What are you smoking? In my opinion, clever code
> that is clear and concise should always be favored over code that is
> unnecessarily verbose.

Clever code is bad because you have to think a couple of times more 
every time you see it. Also, it looks wrong.

> In this particular instance, the code is both clear and concise.
>
> The following line of code should generate the exact same code, but is
> more verbose:
>
> for(uint i = end - 1; i < length && i >= 0; --i)
>
> The compiler will throw away the second check during optimization,
> because i is always >= 0. I don't see why such code should be preferred.
>
> -Steve

This will probably generate similar code:

for (uint i = end - 1; i < uint.max; --i)

Same functionality, really clever.