Signed word lengths and indexes

[Walter Bright]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Note that your argument is predicated on using signed types instead of 
> unsigned types in the first place, and tacitly assumes the issue is 
> frequent enough to *add a new operator*. Yet unsigned shifts correlate 
> naturally with unsigned numbers.
> 
> So what is exactly that is valuable in >>> that makes its presence in 
> the language justifiable?

Generally the irritation I feel whenever I right shift and have to go back 
through and either check the type or just cast it to unsigned to be sure there 
is no latent bug.

For example, the optlink asm code does quite a lot of unsigned right shifts. I 
have to be very careful about the typing to ensure a matching unsigned shift, 
since I have little idea what the range of values the variable can have.