[Ffmpeg-devel] Compiler warnings

[Rich Felker]

On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 12:46:44PM +0100, Erik Slagter wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-02-02 at 11:15 +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> > >> I can think of cases where a signed/unsigned difference could cause
> > >> unexpected behavior, but these are rare.
> > >
> > > Grmbl. If char's would have been unsigned by default, since the
> > > beginning, imho this "warning" problem wouldn't have been there at all.
> > > What would have driven the person that invented this? :-(
> > 
> > The cases I was thinking of are not limited to 8-bit types.  Anything involving
> > arithmetic on numbers with the top bit set can give strange results if the
> > signed and unsigned types are mixed.
> 
> Yes, you're right, but the "char" case is the most disturbing one and
> also the one that generates most warnings. IMHO mixing signed and
> unsigned ints, shorts, longs is always questionable.

IMO it's not questionable at all if the programmer knows what they're
doing. Signed is a property of a comparison operator, not an inherent
property of a number. C just tacks it onto the type in order to
automatically select which type of comparison operator to use (also
which type of right bitshift and promotion to larger types).

Anyway since when is this a warning? I've never gotten signed/unsigned
mismatch warnings with -Wall, and IIRC I remember reading in the gcc
manual that the gcc developers refuse to make signed/unsigned warnings
part of -Wall because they're always nonsense.

Rich