Signed word lengths and indexes

[Don]

Walter Bright wrote:
> 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.

But x >>> 1 doesn't work for shorts and bytes.

> 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.

I've read the OMF spec, and I know it includes shorts and bytes.
So I really don't think >>> solves even this use case.