On Mon, Sep 02, 2013 at 03:20:12PM -0400, Simo Sorce wrote:
On Mon, 2013-09-02 at 19:18 +0200, Lukas Slebodnik wrote:
> ehlo,
>
> Some platforms can have defined SIZE_T_MAX.
> It is better to use conditional build.
>
> Two patches are attached. one for master(1.10) and second for 1.9
Uhmm defining SIZE_T_MAX as (size_t)-1 is not technically correct, it
may work with gcc, but could fail with an optimizer, as -1 is simply an
illegal value for an unsigned quantity.
We should use the actual maximum value here.
Simo.
tl;dr - I think we should simply use SIZE_MAX instead.
I actually think Lukas' patch *improves* the code. It seems that the
non-patched code defined SIZE_T_MAX no matter what. Lukas simply wraps
the macro #define in an #ifdef so if a platform defined SIZE_T_MAX in
some kind of system wide header, the definition would be picked up.
But the real question I see is why did we ever use SIZE_T_MAX where we
should have used SIZE_MAX ? The standard says (7.18.3) that size_t
maximum value is SIZE_MAX with the minimum value set to 65535 where
implementations can choose larger values.
Also, what problem do you see with (size_t)-1 ? As far as I see, this
is the recommended approach. The only alternative I can think of is ~0
but in several discussions (on comp.lang.c.moderated) this was considered
unsafe on some machines.