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Subject: Re: Sign of Integer Operands: int vs unsigned int

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 06:36:00 09/27/03

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On September 27, 2003 at 08:22:47, Omid David Tabibi wrote:

>Isn't it better to always use unsigned int instead of int, for example:
>
>    for (unsigned int i; i < numner; i++)
>
>instead of
>
>    for (int i; i < numner; i++)

You could test it pretty easy. I have something in my program like this:

typedef int Int32;
typedef unsigned int UInt32;
typedef Int32 Int;
typedef Uint32 UInt;

There are others for 16-bit and 8-bit data. The main advantage is that I can
switch to a 64-bit platform by changing a line or two of code here
(specifically, Int and UInt to be 64-bit types).

I could add a FastInt type or something like that, which will just be the
fastest available type when there is a choice between int and unsigned int. You
could do two compiles and compare.

Also worth checking out is this chart
(http://www.tantalon.com/pete/cppopt/appendix.htm#AppendixB_RelativeCosts),
although it is on a PIII. Note that the author says statistical error is +/-
0.1. It would be interesting to see how the author tested this.

Also, is there a penalty for doing assignment between int and unsigned, and vice
versa? It seems like some kind of conversion might be needed.



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